NEW   YORK  UNIVERSITY 


THE  IDEA  OF  GOD 

AN   INQUIRY  CONCERNING 

THE  PRACTICAL  CONTENT  OF  THE  ONTOLOGICAL 
PROOF  OF  THE  EXISTENCE  OF  GOD 

AND  THE 

RELATION  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  THE  OBJECT  OF  RELIGION  TO 

CONSCIOUS  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE,  IN  THE  LIGHT 

OF  MODERN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  AND 

PSYCHOLOGICAL  RESEARCH 


THESIS  SUBMITTED  FOR  THE  DOCTORATE  IN  PHILOSOPHY 


BY 


JAMES   PALMER. 


NEW  YORK 
1904 


NEW   YORK  UNIVERSITY 


THE  IDEA  OF  GOD 

AN  INQUIRY  CONCERNING 

THE  PRACTICAL  CONTENT  OF  THE  ONTOLOGICAL 
PROOF  OF  THE  EXISTENCE  OF  GOD 

AND  THE 

RELATION  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  THE  OBJECT  OF  RELIGION  jTO 

CONSCIOUS  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE,  IN  THE  LIGHT 

OF  MODERN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  AND 

PSYCHOLOGICAL  RESEARCH 


THESIS  SUBMITTED  FOR  THE  DOCTORATE  IN  PHILOSOPHY 


JAMES   PALMER. 

\  i 


NEW  YORK 
1904 


p 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION. 

THE  PROBLEM  AND  ITS  RELATIONS  :  Religion  Differentiated  from 
Speculative  Thought.  —  Speculative  Perversion  of  the  Onto- 
logical  Proof.  — Related  to  Religious  Experience.  — Anselm's 
Identification  of  the  Idea  of  a  most  Perfect  Being  with  the 
God  of  Religion.  —  Analysis  of  Consciousness.  —  Internal  Fac- 
tors. —  The  Expression  of  the  Religious  Emotions.  —  The 
Emotions  and  their  Roots.  The  Work  of  Consciousness.  The 
Idea.  Its  Purpose.  —  The  three  Factors  of  Consciousness.  — 
The  Historic  Development  of  Religions.  —  The  Construction 
of  Proofs.  —  Outline  of  Discussion....  .  1-9 


PAET  I. 
THE   ONTOLOGICAL  PROOF  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY. 

CHAPTER  I.  HISTORICAL  SURVEY  :  Augustine  on  Truth.  —  An- 
selm's Discovery.  —  Emotions  Described.  —  Key  to  the  Argu- 
ment. —  Descartes'  Appeal  to  Causality.  —  Leibnitz,  the  Prin- 
ciple of  Non-contradiction.  —  Attitude  of  Different  Schools  of 
Philosophy.  Kant's  Criticism 10-14 

CHAPTER  II.  CONCEPT  AND  BEING:  Anselm's  Apparent  per  Sal- 
turn.  —  Royce's  Analysis  of  the  Concepts  of  Being.  — Realism, 
Mysticism,  Critical  Rationalism  and  Idealism  Defined.  —  Real- 
ism, Monistic  and  Pluralistic,  Spinoza.  — Locke  and  Hume. — 
Mysticism. — Critical  Rationalism,  Kant,  Transcendental  Ideal- 
ism Combined  with  Empirical  Realism.  —  Isolating  Single  Fac- 
ulties. —  Phenomena  and  Things-in -themselves. —  The  Concept 
of  Validity.  Kant's  Criticism  of  the  a  priori  Proof.  Value 
of  Kant's  Work.  — Idealism.  The  Analysis  of  Consciousness. 
—  Relation  of  Idea  and  Object.  Purpose  of  the  Idea  a  Quest 

for  its  Other.  —  Idealism  and  the  Ontological  Proof. 14-23 

iii 


286271 


IV  TABLE   OF   CONTENTS. 

PART   II. 

THE  ONTOLOGICAL  PKOOF  AND   PSYCHOLOGY  OF 

KELIGION. 

CHAPTER  I.  THE  RELATION  OF  RELIGION  TO  PSYCHOLOGY  :  The 
Spheres  of  Religion  and  Psychology.  —  Religion  has  a  Psy- 
chology. —  Description  of  Experience.  —  An  Ulterior  Value  of 
the  Ontological  Proof.  —  Descartes'  Discovery.  Psychology 
Separated  from  Religion.  — Efforts  to  Function  Religion 24-28 

CHAPTER  II.  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE:  Kant's  Criticism. — An- 
selm  and  Augustine.  —  The  God-idea  and  Religious  Emotion. 

—  The  Ontological  Proof  Directs  to  Introspection.  —  Descartes. 

—  Religious  Emotions  Facts.  —  Finiteness  and  Limitation.  — 
Rational  and  Material  Self  Distinguished  in  Consciousness. — 
Religion  Involves  all  Faculties.  —  A  Primary  Religious  Emo- 
tion. —  Development  of  this  Emotion.  —  Relation  of  Ontolog- 
ical Idea  to.  —  The  Infinite,  Max  Miiller.  —  Shamanism  'and 
Divination. — Relation  of  Animism. —  Its  Support  to  our  Theory. 

—  Material  and  Mental  Fields  for  Theogonic  Material.  —  De- 
velopment of  Pantheism.   It  is  a  Philosophy.  —  Illustration  from 
Religion  of  Romans.  —  Higher  Forms  of  Religious  Experience. 
Metanoia.  —  The    Testimony   of   Psychology.  —  Worship.  — 
Development  of  Saintliness.  —  Corrective  Influence  of   Psy- 
chology. —  Religious  Experience  a  Part   of  the  Totality  of 
Experience 28-48 

CHAPTER  III.  EXPERIENCE  AS  KNOWLEDGE  :  Credo  ut  Intel- 
legam.  —  A  Corrective  to  Mysticism.  —  Historic  Revelation. 

—  Enthusiasm.  —  Methods  of  Dreams,  Intoxications,  Trance. 

—  Psychology's  Treatment.  —  The  Subconscious. — Tests  of 
Enthusiasm,  Truth  and  Value.  — The  Founder  of  Christianity. 

—  Mysticism.  —  Buddhism.  —  Social   Self   Consciousness.  — 
The  Unfolding  of  the  God-idea 43-52 

PART  III. 
THE  ONTOLOGICAL  PEOOF  AND  ETHICS. 

CHAPTER  I.  ETHICAL  PRINCIPLES  :  Conflict  of  Theories. —  Ethics 
Related  to  Religion.  —  Problem  of  Ethics.  —  Purpose  in  Act 
and  Idea.  —  Meaning  of  Purpose  and  Idea.  —  Science  of  Ethics. 

—  Light  from  Anthropology.  —  Development  of  Ethics  along 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS.  V 

with  Religion.  —  Limit  to  Ethical  Force  of  Nature  Religion, 
Fatalism.  —  The  Fields  of  Religion  and  Ethics.  —  Light  from 
Psychology.  —  Hume.  —  Functioning  of  Ethics.  —  Psycho- 
logical Analysis  of  Conduct.  —  Failure  of  Hedonism.  —  Of 
Institutionalism.  —  The  Norms  of  Ethics,  that  Discovered  by 
Religion 53-63 

CHAPTER  II.  THE  ONTOLOGICAL  METHOD  OF  ETHICS  :  Our  Atti- 
tude toward  Metaphysics.  —  The  Reality  of  Things,  Ideas  and 
Events.  —  Kant's  Ethical  Theory.  —  The  Good  Will,  the  Moral 
Law,  Conception  of  Duty.  —  Origin  of  Moral  Conceptions, 
Autonomy  and  Heteronomy.  —  The  Radical  Evil,  Restoration. 
—  Relation  of  our  Theory  to  Kant's.  — Criticism  of  Kant.  — 
Autonomy  in  Saint  Paul's  Conception  of  His  Relation  to  God. — 
"Is  the  Good  Good  because  God  Wills  it?  "  —  Calvinistic  De- 
terminism. —  Our  Agreement  with  Kant  Concerning  Autonomy 
and  Heteronomy.  —  Service  of  the  Ontological  Proof. 63-69 

CONCLUSION  :  The  Ontological  Proof  a  Guiding  Principle.  —  Re- 
ligion the  Tangible  Proof. 69-70 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


Anselmi  Opera.     Minge's  Collection.     Vol.  155. 

Bibliotheca  Sacra.     1851  Translation  of  the  Proslogion.     Maginnis. 

Augustine.  Schaff's  Library  of  Nicene  and  Post-Nicene  Fathers.  Vols. 
1-8.  Buffalo. 

Shedd,  W.  G.  T.     History  of  Christian  Doctrine.     2  vols.     Scribners. 

Flint,  Robert.     Theism  and  Agnosticism.     2  vols.      Scribners. 

Windelband.  A  History  of  Philosophy.  Trans,  by  Tufts.  Mac- 
mil  Ian. 

Spinoza's  Works.  Bonn's  Philosophical  Library.  2  vols.  Trans,  by 
Elwes. 

Descartes.  Discourse  on  Method,  Meditations.  Trans,  by  John  Veitch. 
Blackwood. 

Kant.     Critique  of  Pure  Reason.     Trans,  by  Max  Miiller.     Macmillan. 

Locke.     On  the  Human  Understanding.     Ward,  Lock  &  Co. 

Leibnitz.     New  Essays  on  the  Understanding.     Trans,  by  Langley. 

Hume.     Treatise  of  Human  Nature.     Selby-Bigge.     Ed.  Oxford. 

Hume.     Essays,  Greene  and  Grose.     Longmans. 

Royce,  Josiah.     The  World  and  the  Individual.     2  vols.     Macmillan. 

Pfleiderer.  Religions-philosophic  auf  geschichtlicher  Grundlage.  Ver- 
lag  von  G.  Reimer.  Berlin. 

Religionsphilosophie.  Von  H.  Hoffding.  Ubersetzt  von  F.  Bendixen. 
Leipzig. 

Ausgewahlte  Werke.  Edward  von  Hartmann.  Das  religiose  Be- 
wusstsein.  Philosophic  des  Umbewussten.  Herman  Haacke. 
Leipzig. 

Schleiermacher,  F.  On  Religion.  Speeches  to  its  Cultured  Despisers 
Trans,  by  J.  Oman.  Keagan  Paul. 

Tiele,  C.  P.  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Religion  to  the  Spread  of  Uni- 
versal Religions.  Trans,  by  J.  E.  Carpenter.  Keagan  Paul. 

Lotze,  Hermann.  The  Philosophy  of  Religion.  Trans,  by  Conybeare. 
Macmillan. 

vii 


Vlll  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Max  Miiller,  F.     The  Gifford  Lectures  on   Natural  Religion.     4  vols* 

Longmans. 

James,  William.     The  Varieties  of  Eeligious  Experience.     Longmans. 
Myers,  F.  W.  H.     Human  Personality  and  its  Survival  of  Bodily  Death. 

Longmans. 
Spencer,  Herbert.     Synthetic  Philosophy.     Principles  of  Sociology.     3 

vols.     Appleton. 
Wallace,  W.     Lectures   and  Essays  on  Natural  Theology  and  Ethics. 

Oxford. 

Martineau,  James.     Study  of  Religion.     Macmillan. 
Rhys-Davids.     Buddhism.     Putnams. 

Aristotle.     The  Nicomachian  Ethics.    Trans,  by  Williams.    Longmans. 
Martineau,  James.     Types  of  Ethical  Theory.     Macmillan. 
Kant.     Theory  of  Ethics  including  the  Critique  of  the  Practical  Reason. 

Trans,  by  T.  K.  Abbott.     Longmans. 
Sidgwick,  Henry.     The  Method  of  Ethics.     Macmillan. 
Taylor,  A.  E.     The  Problem  of  Conduct.     Macmillan. 
Seth,  James.     Ethical  Principles.     Scribners. 
Ellinwood,  F.  F.     Notes  on  Comparative  Religion. 
Edwards,  Jonathan.     Works  in  8  vols.,  by  Isaac  Thomas,  Jr. 
Paulsen,  F.     Immanuel  Kant,  His  Life  and  Doctrine.     Trans,  by  Creigh- 

ton  and  Lefevre.     Scribners. 


INTRODUCTION. 

THE  PROBLEM  AND  ITS  RELATIONS. 

Religion.  —  The  differentiation  of  Religion  from  speculative 
thought  took  place  in  a  process  of  historical  development.  To 
Schleiermacher  belongs  the  distinction  of  being  the  first  to  point 
out  that  Religion  has  a  sphere  peculiarly  its  own.  Speculative 
religious  thought  may  take  the  form  of  Animism,  Pantheism, 
Deism  or  Theism ;  it  may  be  dogmatical,  skeptical  or  even  atheistic, 
but  in  these  ranges  it  diverges  from  Religion  and  is  metaphysical 
rather  than  practical.  It  was  to  guard  against  the  waste  of  energy 
in  such  dialectical  performances  that  Kant  thought  out  and  gave 
to  the  world  his  Critique  of  Pure  Reason.  The  "police  duty," 
however,  which  he  thought  this  work  would  serve,  has  not  been 
and  never  can  be  successful.  If  life  had  no  personal  concern  in 
the  Object  of  pure  reason's  research,  the  human  mind  could  well 
abandon  its  quest,  settle  down  quietly  to  the  humdrum  of  a  routine 
life  and  content  itself  with  empirical  verities.  This  however  is 
not  the  case.  Religion  is  a  vitally  personal  topic ;  and,  as  an  ever 
present  experience,  it  keeps  reason  in  touch  with  the  Object  of 
speculative  inquiry  on  the  practical  side.  Kant  himself  was  aware 
of  this  fact  and  sought  to  develop  it  in  the  Critique  of  the  Practi- 
cal Reason  but  the  relation  is  too  manifold  to  be  summed  up  in  a 
Categorical  Imperative. 

Speculative  Eeligion.  —  It  is  the  intention  of  this  thesis  to  direct 
attention  to  the  relation  of  the  a  priori  proof  of  the  existence  of 
God,  as  it  was  formulated  by  Anselm,  to  Religion,  as  opposed  to 
or  different  from,  speculative  religious  thought.  The  Ontological 
Proof  as  a  proof  has  been  abundantly  treated.  It  would  take  the 
space  usually  allotted  to  a  monograph  to  sufficiently  catalogue  the 
discussion  it  has  occasioned.  But  in  all  of  this  treatment  by  lead- 

1 


2*'  THE    IDEA    OF    GOD. 

ers  of  thought  and  men  of  less  ability  the  argument  has  been  given 
a  speculative  turn  and  the  practical  content,  which  is  a  matter  of 
permanent  value,  has  been  overlooked.  One  needs  only  to  turn  to 
some  books  on  Theism  or  treatises  on  Dogmatic  Theology  to  verify 
the  truth  of  this  statement.  It  will  be  discovered  there,  that  the 
discussion  turns  on  necessary  existence,  perfection  of  being,  exist- 
ence as  a  part  of  the  concept  of  a  perfect  being,  causality,  etc. 
Descartes  was  the  first  thus  to  use  and  abuse  Anselm's  discovery. 
By  so  doing  he  rescued  this  form  of  proof  from  its  obscurity  but 
at  the  same  time  diverted  it  from  Religion  to  Philosophy.  Leib- 
nitz, Spinoza  and  Herbert  of  Cherbury  agreed  in  following  Des- 
cartes in  this  perversion.  It  thus  entered  into  Theism,  Deism, 
and  Pantheism.  And  it  was  against  these  speculative  forms  of 
the  argument  that  Kant  hurled  his  powerful  criticism. 

The  position  here  taken  in  the  face  of  this  speculative  use  of 
the  Proof  is  that  Anselm  discovered  the  argument  in  devout 
meditation,  that  it  is  inseparably  linked,  even  in  its  speculative 
.parts,  with  religious  experience,  and,  that  it  has  a  perennial  force 
as  an  expression  of  the  religious  consciousness  of  mankind.  And, 
while  it  may  be  true  that  only  a  few  gifted  minds  grasp  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  words  in  which  Anselm  repeatedly  expressed  him- 
self, nevertheless,  the  Ontological  Idea  has  ever  been  a  constitu- 
tive principle  in  the  development  of  historic  religions.  Since  the 
days  of  Amselm  many  new  fields  of  knowledge  have  been  ex- 
plored, titanic  efforts  have  been  made  to  formulate  a  satisfactory 
theory  of  knowledge,  the  science  of  psychology  has  rendered  definite 
service  to  the  examination  of  all  experimental  phenomena,  and 
anthropology  has  introduced  new  facts  for  the  science  of  religion. 
The  fruits  of  the  labor  in  all  these  fields  will  be  found  to  be  of 
distinct  service  in  our  examination  of  the  subject  before  us. 
With  these  preliminary  remarks  we  will  now  enter  upon  the  task 
of  stating  the  Problem  and  its  Relations. 

Consciousness  is  the  inner  mystery  of  experience.  The 
thought  world  stands  on  one  side  and  the  world  of  things  stands 
over  against  it.  Consciousness,  in  between,  is  the  transformation 
point.  When  Religion  turns  to  consciousness  for  a  verification 


INTRODUCTION.  3 

of  its  facts,  it  has  made  its  appeal  to  the  highest  court  of  human 
decisions.  In  its  inception,  preservation  and  continuation  Reli- 
gion is  always  related  to  conscious  experience.  The  problem 
arises  when  religious  experience  relates  itself  to  an  Object. 
This  is  not  remarkable  since  a  problem  always  arises  when  reason 
attempts  to  show  the  relation  of  any  idea  to  its  object.  There  is 
a  heterogeneousness  of  object  and  idea  which  consciousness  alone 
serves  to  link  together.  It  was  this  apparent  chasm  between  the 
idea  and  its  object  which  Anselm  overleaped  when  he  said : 
"  Sic  ergo  vere  est  aliquid  quo  majus  cogitari  non  potest,  et  nee 
cogitari  possit  non  esse  :  et  hoc  es  Tu,  Domine  Deus  noster."  l 
The  transition  from  the  "  aliquid  quo  majus  cogitari  non  potest " 
to  the  "  hoc  es  Tu  "  constitutes  the  great  problem  of  epistemology, 
and  the  reasoning  by  which  this  apparent  per  saltum  was  removed 
formed  the  Ontological  argument  in  its  most  complete  statement. 
It  runs  as  follows :  "  Et  certe  id,  quo  majus  cogitari  nequit,  non 
potest  esse  in  intellectu  solo.  Si  enim  vel  in  solo  intellectu  est, 
potest  cogitari  esse  et  in  re,  quod  majus  est.  .  .  .  Existet  ergo 
procul  dubio  aliquid,  quo  majus  cogitari  non  valet,  et  intellectu  et  in 
re."  2  The  argument  itself  is  not  what  chiefly  concerns  us.  From 
our  point  of  view  we  are  most  interested  to  observe  the  conscious 
effort  which  the  argument  expresses  to  pass  from  what  is  "  in  solo 
intellectu  "  to  an  "  esse  in  intellectu  et  in  re  "  or  the  "  Hoc  es  Tu  " 
of  experience.  We  perceive  in  this  effort  an  expression  of  the 
fact  that  consciousness  in  religious  experience  as  in  other  expe- 
rience recognizes  internal  facts  with  both  internal  and  external 
meanings. 

So  long  as  attention  is  restricted  to  the  internal  facts,  Religion 
is  a  psychic  state  in  which  feeling  and  need,  fear  and  hope, 
enthusiasm  and  submission  play  a  great  part.3  Nevertheless  these 
experiences  are  not  without  ideas  which  constitute  a  relation 
between  the  conscious  self  and  all  that  is  beyond.  For  this  reason 
while  all  consciousness  is  unquestionably  internal,  a  purely  inter- 

1  Anselm,  "Proslogion  2." 

2  Anselm,  "  Proslogium  II  Opera,"  Minge  ed. 
3H6ffding,  "  Religions-philosophic,"  I. 


4  THE    IDEA    OF    GOD. 

nal  Religion  is  excluded  from  the  realm  of  possibility.  Again 
these  psychic  states  are  composed  of  emotions  which  tend  to  express 
themselves  either  physically  or  intellectually.  This  brings  Religion 
to  the  surface  of  life  if  it  does  not  extend  it  further.  It  is  the 
expression  of  the  religious  emotions  rather  than  the  emotions 
themselves  and  their  roots  which  occupy  a  large  part  of  the  atten- 
tion of  students  who  devote  themselves  to  the  study  of  Religion. 
The  books  on  Religion  and  the  customs  of  Religion  are  full  of 
them.  The  attitudes,  forms  and  symbols  of  worship  are  either 
external  representations  of  internal  states  or  the  imitation  of  per- 
sons in  whom  such  states  are  a  reality.  The  same  emotions  under 
differing  conditions  may  find  expression  in  music,  in  poetry,  in 
artistic  symbolism  or  in  a  creed,  each  of  which  represents  life's 
reaction  upon  its  own  conscious  experiences.  And  last  of  all  and 
best  of  all  the  most  perfect  expression  of  the  religious  emotions  is 
to  be  seen  in  a  life,  so  ordered,  that  the  inner  experiences  are 
brought  into  harmony  with  the  Universal  Will.  This  I  would  call 
the  ethical  expression  of  the  religious  emotions. 

The  fact  is  to  be  noted,  in  this  connection,  that  it  is  the  nature 
of  the  religious  emotions  to  express  themselves  and  that  it  is 
within  the  sphere  of  consciousness,  when  attention  is  directed 
thereto,  not  only  to  be  aware  of  the  outward  facts  of  experience, 
but  also,  to  know  the  emotions  themselves  from  which  these  facts 
arise.  It  is  also  to  be  observed  that  the  same  emotions  such  as 
fear,  faith  and  love  which  compel  certain  physical  attitudes  will, 
under  changed  conditions,  constrain  to  ethical  conduct.  In  this 
truth  the  hope  of  culture  is  enshrined.  The  dynamic  is  given.  It 
is  simply  a  question  of  how  a  present  energy  is  to  be  directed. 
The  power  lies  back  of  the  emotions. 

It  is  when  we  turn  our  attention  to  these  emotions  themselves 
and  their  roots  that  we  meet  with  the  Problem  which  the  Onto- 
logical  Proof  thrusts  upon  us.  Here  is  a  force  which  is  known 
in  consciousness  which  produces  something  in  a  matter  of  fact 
world.  How  can  we  get  at  it  ?  First  of  all  it  is  to  be  asserted 
that  consciousness  is  that  function  of  intelligence  whereby  facts 
and  ideas  are  combined.  There  is  no  consciousness  without  both 


INTRODUCTION.  5 

of  these  elements  and,  in  the  case  in  hand,  emotions  would  be 
simple  facts  or  events  which  consciousness  could  not  grasp  if  they 
were  not  linked  inseparably  with  their  corresponding  ideas.  Fear, 
faith  and  love  are  nothing  without  an  object,  however  ideal  that 
object  may  be.  And  it  is  the  idea  of  an  object,  linked  with  them 
which  constitutes  them  conscious  emotions.  This  idea  which  the 
understanding  involves  with  these  simple  emotions  is  the  object  or 
Other  of  which  they  are  correlates.  We  are,  therefore,  in  experi- 
ence never  conscious  of  a  pure  emotion  alone,  or  of  an  object  alone, 
but  of  an  emotion  combined  with  the  idea  of  an  object.  Thus  in 
the  Ontological  Argument  the  emotion  expressed  in  the  words 
"  Hoc  es  Tu  "  is  not  pure  ecstasy  but  ecstasy  combined  with  the 
idea  of  an  object  whose  best  description  is  "  id  quo  majus  cogitari 
nequit." 

So  much  then  for  consciousness.  It  reveals  in  an  experience,  a 
fact,  that  is,  in  the  present  case,  an  emotion  and  also  an  idea 
which  represents,  in  the  case  under  consideration,  an  Other  — 
"  than  which  a  greater  cannot  be  conceived."  Our  entire  theory 
depends  on  these  two  factors  of  consciousness.  Neither  can  be 
taken  up  or  abandoned  without  the  other.  The  reality  of  the 
emotions  is  part  and  parcel  with  the  reality  of  self.  The  idea, 
on  the  other  hand,  without  which  the  emotions  amount  to  zero  so 
far  as  consciousness  is  concerned  is  the  counterpart  of  the  Other 
of  the  universe  to  which  the  self  is  related  in  various  ways.  In 
fact  the  relationship  is  so  manifold  that  an  infinite  variety  of 
objects  and  events  is  involved  in  the  development  of  Religion. 
But  since  the  individual  self,  as  known  in  consciousness,  makes 
use  of  an  understanding,  subject  to  the  forms  of  thought,  its  rela- 
tion to  the  Other  must  be  an  historical  relation,  in  so  much  as 
the  relation  of  every  idea  to  its  object  is  successive  and  therefore 
historical. 

Idea.  —  The  next  step  after  observing  this  inseparable  union 
of  emotion  and  idea  in  a  living  consciousness  is  to  make  a  further 
analysis  of  our  concept  of  an  idea.  The  division  of  ideas  accord- 
ing to  their  simplicity  or  complexity  must  ever  be  a  relative 
division  since  the  simplest  idea  is  both  sensory  and  motor,  cog- 


b  THE   IDEA    OF   GOD. 

nitive  and  conative.  Neither  does  the  Cartesian  notion  of  vivid- 
ness nor  the  Spinozistic  determination  of  adequacy  help  us.  Hume 
was  nearer  to  our  point  of  view  when  he  spoke  of  the  force  and 
liveliness  of  ideas.  Professor  Royce  in  his  Gifford  lectures  on  the 
World  and  the  Individual  says  :  f '  An  idea  is  any  state  of  mind 
that  has  a  conscious  meaning."  In  another  place  he  says :  "  Your 
intelligent  ideas  of  things  never  consist  in  mere  images  of  those 
things,  but  always  involve  a  purpose  of  how  you  intend  to  act 
toward  the  things  of  which  you  have  ideas."  This  use  of  the 
term  he  abundantly  defends  and  makes  the  basis  of  his  theory  of 
knowledge.  An  idea  without  a  purpose,  an  intention,  a  meaning 
is  as  little  an  idea  as  the  image  in  a  mirror. 

Holding  fast  then  to  this  definition  of  an  idea  and  returning  to 
what  we  have  already  observed  in  consciousness  we  are  prepared 
to  assert  that  a  state  of  consciousness  containing  an  emotion  with 
its  idea  involves  the  three  possible  psychical  factors  —  feeling, 
knowing  and  willing.  In  other  words  the  act  of  consciousness 
involves  the  entire  personality.  And  the  fact  that  a  religious 
consciousness  has  for  its  content  an  emotion  directed  to  or  awak- 
ened by  a  Supernatural  Being  does  not  isolate  it  from  these 
psychical  conditions.  Thus  our  analysis  has  supplied  us  with  a 
guiding  principal  whose  significance  will  appear  as  the  discussion 
proceeds ;  for  we  find  that  speculative  religious  thought  is  ever 
tending  to  connect  itself  with  one  or  other  mental  faculty  and  thus 
present  an  abnormal  development.  Deism  and  theistic  systems 
are  predominantly  intellectual.  Schleiermacher  and  the  mystics 
give  too  much  prominence  to  the  emotions  or  feelings.  And  Kant 
followed  by  Schopenhauer  and  von  Hartmann  has  given  undue 
prominence  to  the  will.  The  only  corrective  for  such  one  sided- 
ness  is  a  return  to  the  religious  consciousness.  And  it  is  the 
Ontological  proof  alone,  as  an  expression  of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness, which  gives  due  emphasis  to  the  internal  and  external  mean- 
ings of  the  religious  life. 

Public  Religion.  —  Thus  far,  we  have  not  gone  beyond,  the  per- 
sonal and  private  limits  of  religious  experience.  We  have  been 
concerned  with  it  as  a  psychological  and  internal  affair.  It  is  clear, 


INTRODUCTION.  7 

however,  that  the  expression  of  the  religious  emotions  must  be  ex- 
ternal, and,  to  a  certain  extent,  public.  It  is  also  evident  that  the 
religious  idea,  in  going  beyond  self  to  find  its  Other,  must  also  dis- 
cover new  relationships  in  a  world  or  universe.  The  mind  accepts 
what  it  finds  and  reacts  upon  it,  but,  in  so  doing,  it  gives  up  its 
private  character  and  recognizes  self  as  one  of  many.  The  world 
is  discovered  to  be  full  of  things  and  events  which  either  help  or 
hinder  the  religious  life  in  its  progress. 

Historical  Development  of  Religions,  —  If  our  account,  up  to  this 
point  is  accepted  as  a  true  analysis  of  the  content  of  a  religious 
consciousness,  we  need  have  no  difficulty  in  accounting  for  the  his- 
toric development  of  religions.  In  a  very  general  description 
these  may  be  grouped  under  three  heads,  as  follows  :  (1)  Fetishism 
and  Animism,  (2)  Polytheism  and  Pantheism,  (3)  Henotheism 
and  Theism.,  These  groups  each  combine  practical  and  theoreti- 
cal elements.  In  each  of  them  a  religious  emotion,  combined  with 
its  idea,  is  found  seeking  its  object  or  Other ;  and  the  Keligion  is 
named  according  to  the  object  seized  upon.  Taking  the  first 
group  first,  one  can  easily  understand,  how  the  mind  of  the  primi- 
tive nature  worshiper,  not  satisfied  with  the  limited  nature  of  his 
fetish,  would  seek  to  satisfy  his  idea,  by  increasing  the  number  of 
his  fetishes  and  philosophizing  concerning  their  occult  powers. 
Thus  animism,  which  spiritualizes  the  objects  of  worship,  would 
form  a  kind  of  philosophy  of  fetishism.  In  fact,  Tiele  takes  the 
position,  that  no  Religion  is  to  be  found,  in  which  this  process  has 
not  taken  place.  From  this  position,  the  transition  is  not  great, 
after  the  mind  has  discovered  that  single  objects  of  worship 
whether  small  or  great  however  multiplied  and  idealized  are  not 
sufficient  to  satisfy  the  purpose  of  its  idea,  the  transition  is  not 
great,  I  say,  from  Polytheism  to  Pantheism.  It  is  readily  seen, 
if  we  follow  this  line  of  thought,  that  Monotheism  is  not  possible 
for  any  other  than  a  spiritual  Religion.  Any  or  all  material  ob- 
jects could  not  fulfill  the  Ontological  Idea.  The  mind  is  con- 
stantly asserting  its  superiority  to  material  things  ;  how  then,  could 
it  indefinitely  look  to  them  as  masters  ?  "  By  an  instinct  earlier 
than  any  history  can  trace  man  sets  the  power  in  and  behind 


8  THE    IDEA   OF   GOD. 

phenomena  on  his  side. "  l  This  is  reason's  reaction  upon  experi- 
ence. We  may  expect,  therefore,  and  the  facts  of  anthropology 
do  not  disappoint  our  expectations,  that  we  shall  find  in  Eeligion 
certain  internal  emotions  with  their  ideas  and  a  constant  effort  on 
the  part  of  the  intellect  to  adjust  the  rest  of  experience  to  harmo- 
nize with  these  ideas.  It  is  the  effort  to  adjust  the  rest  of  experi- 
ence which  gives  rise  to  the  theoretical  elements  of  Religion  and 
causes  it  to  halt  in  halfway  places.  A  Theodicy  is  needed  at 
almost  every  turn  of  life. 

Construction  of  Proofs.  —  The  events  which  call  for  a  Theodicy 
also  point  to  Atheism  as  a  possibility.  This  fact  may  have  given 
an  impulse  to  the  construction  of  proofs,  which  does  not  begin 
until  a  late  stage  has  been  reached  in  the  development  of  religious 
thought.  The  basis  of  the  proofs  is  found,  either,  in  the  nature  of 
the  universe,  yielding  the  Cosmological  and  Teleological  arguments, 
the  nature  of  the  soul,  giving  the  Psycho-physical  proof,  or  the 
the  nature  of  Being  leading  to  the  Ontological  idea.  Our  interest 
in  this  latter  form  of  proof  arises,  from  its  internal  and  immediate 
nature,  and  the  fact  that  it  directs  attention  inward,  thus  preparing 
the  way  for  the  discovery  of  consciousness  with  its  contents.  We 
also  find  that  "  it  expresses  that  impulse  which  we  experience 
toward  the  supersensuous,  and  that  faith  in  its  truth  which  is  the 
starting  point  of  all  religion."2  This  impulse  toward  the  super- 
sensuous  is  such  a  practical  element  of  life  that  it  puts  the  mind 
always  on  the  alert  to  verify  its  experiences,  and,  whatever  other 
things  experience  may  discover  in  the  world  of  facts,  reason  con- 
tinues its  search  for  the  Object  of  Religion. 

In  the  following  chapters  some  attention  will  be  paid  to  the 
Theories  of  Knowledge  which  recognize  the  chasm  between  thought 
and  things ;  and,  it  will  also  be  necessary  to  inquire  further  con- 
cerning the  nature  of  ideas  and  their  relation  to  Reality.  In 
this  connection  the  speculative  religious  ideas  which  have  grown 
up  in  connection  with  various  concepts  of  being  will  serve  as 
illustrations  of  our  theme.  In  the  second  part  the  Psychology 

1  Wallace,  "Gifford  Lectures,"  p.  193. 

2Lotze,  "  Outlines  of  a  Philosophy  of  Keligion,"  p.  12. 


INTRODUCTION.  .  9 

of  the  Religious  Emotions  will  be  drawn  upon  to  support  that  part 
of  the  proof  which  connects  with  experience.  And  a  third  part 
will  indicate  the  relation  of  the  Ontological  Idea  to  action  and 
show  the  bearing  of  the  entire  discussion  upon  the  Problem  of 
Conduct  and  Life. 


PART  I. 
THE   IDEA  OF   GOD   AND  EPISTEMOLOGY. 

I. 

HISTORICAL  SURVEY. 

A  brief  historical  sketch  will  be  useful,  in  setting  our  topic  in 
its  connection  with  other  methods  of  knowledge.  The  analysis  of 
consciousness,  in  the  preceding  chapter,  revealed  the  subjects  to 
which  an  a  priori  proof  stands  related.  The  idea  must  be  sup- 
ported by  a  theory  of  knowledge,  the  emotion  demands  a  psycho- 
logical support  and  the  intention  of  the  idea  belongs  to  a  theory 
of  motives  or  ethics.  Let  us  see,  now,  what  the  actual  fate  of  the 
argument  has  been. 

When  Augustine  said:  "There  must  be  a  truth.  For  if  you 
deny  there  is  a  truth,  you  affirm  there  is  no  truth  ;  and  thus  you 
contradict  yourself.  The  sum  total  of  truth,  conceived  as  a  unity, 
is,  however,  the  very  essence  of  God,"  he  was  evidently  preparing 
the  way  for  Anselm's  discovery.  The  preparation,  however,  was 
purely  in  method,  not  in  substance.  Augustine  might  be  called 
the  father  of  the  introspective  method.  It  was  he  who  first  forced 
doubt  to  pay  tribute  to  certainty.  And,  by  directing  attention  to 
the  immediacy  of  consciousness,  he  furnished  a  method  which,  in 
the  hands  of  Anselm  and  Descartes,  prepared  the  way  for  valuable 
discoveries. 

The  relation  of  the  Ontological  Proof  to  consciousness  is  made 
very  clear  in  the  preface  to  the  Proslogion. 1  There  the  author 
declares  :  "  I  began  to  inquire  whether  it  might  not  be  possible  to 
find  in  a  single  argument,  which  being  complete  in  itself,  would 

1  Anselm,  "Proslogion  Preface,"  translated  by  Maginnis,  Bibliotheca  Sacra, 
1851. 

10 


THE    IDEA    OF   GOD    AND    EPISTEMOLOGY.  11 

need  the  aid  of  no  other  for  its  confirmation,  and  which  alone 
would  suffice  to  prove  that  there  is  indeed  a  God,  that  He  is  the 
supreme  good  and  that  He  is  in  need  of  nothing  —  an  argument 
sufficient  to  prove  all  that  we  are  accustomed  to  believe  concern- 
ing the  Divine  nature.  .  .  .  But  when  I  endeavored  to  banish 
this  thought  entirely,  lest,  by  occupying  my  mind  in  fruitless 
search,  it  might  detain  me  from  my  other  studies  in  which  I  might 
make  some  useful  progress,  then  it  began  to  press  itself  upon  me 
the  more  with  a  kind  of  importunity.  In  the  very  conflict  of  my 
thought,  that  presented  itself  to  me  which  I  had  despaired  of 
finding." 

The  point  of  interest  in  this  rather  long  quotation  is  the  likeness 
it  shows  to  what  might  be  found  in  the  expression  of  any  scientific 
consciousness.  The  same  restlessness  and  sense  of  compulsion  is 
apparent  which  frequently  anticipates  discovery.  It  is  true  that 
Anselm  l  himself  regarded  his  discovery  as  an  "  illumination."  He 
said  :  "  Thanks  be  unto  Thee,  O  Lord,  thanks  be  unto  Thee,  that 
which  I  at  first  believed  through  thine  own  endowment,  I  now 
understand  through  thine  illumination,  even  were  I  unwilling  to 
believe  that  Thou  art,  I  cannot  remain  ignorant  of  thine  exist- 
ence." We  are  not  concerned,  however,  with  his  interpretation 
of  his  experience.  The  term  religious  consciousness  was  unknown 
to  him  and  belongs  to  a  more  fully  developed  psychology.  But 
his  description  of  his  inner  experience  is  exceedingly  interesting. 
It  shows  that  to  him  at  least  the  Proof  had  an  emotional  and  re- 
ligious as  well  as  a  logical  significance. 

Without  repeating  the  argument  as  stated  in  the  Proslogion  and 
expounded  in  the  reply  to  Gaunilo,  let  us  note  that  the  judgment 
"  existet  ergo  ...  in  re,"  is  analytic.  In  other  words  existence  is 
a  part  of  the  content  of  the  concept  of  the  most  perfect  being. 
This  statement  is  not  introduced  here  for  the  sake  of  discussion, 
disputed  as  it  is,  but  as  a  point  of  contrast  in  making  the  transi- 
tion from  Anselm  to  Descartes.  For  while  it  is  true  that  Des- 
cartes asserts  :  2  "  That  we  may  validly  infer  the  existence  of  God 


"Proslogion,"  C.  2,  end. 
2  Descartes,  "  Principles  of  Philosophy,"  trans,  by  J.  Vietch,  p.  199. 


12  THE    IDEA    OP    GOD. 

from  necessary  existence  being  comprised  in  the  concept  we  have 
of  Him,"  he  still  regards  it  as  an  inference  and  proceeds  to  follow 
the  clue  of  causality.  He  says  : l  "  The  greater  objective  perfec- 
tion there  is  in  our  idea  of  a  thing  the  greater  also  must  be  the 
perfection  of  its  cause."  The  bald  realism  of  the  cartesian 
dualism  here  begins  to  shine  through.  In  the  third  Meditation, 
also,  after  stating  what  the  idea  of  God  includes,  he  adds  : 2  "  The 
more  attentively  I  consider  them  the  less  I  feel  persuaded  that 
the  idea  I  have  of  them  owes  its  origin  to  myself  alone."  Thus 
in  Descartes'  hands  the  Ontological  Proof  began  to  assume  an  a 
posteriori  character. 

This  fact  is  the  more  remarkable  when  we  consider  the  Carte- 
sian method.  He  was  the  philosopher  par  excellajis  of  conscious- 
ness. In  this  he  may  have  been  guided  by  Anselm  and  Augus- 
tine but  the  important  fact  is  "  that  he  reached  by  way  of  doubt 
the  principle  of  self  consciousness  and  made  it  the  starting  point 
of  his  system." 3  The  value  of  this  principle  we  will  have  occasion 
to  note  later  in  this  connection  ;  we  may  simply  remark  here  that 
it  at  first  lent  itself  to  Rational  Psychology  rather  than  Religion. 
It  was  Descartes,  then,  who  began  the  preparation  for  the  study  of 
the  psychological  relations  of  religion,  who,  also,  perverted  the 
Ontological  Proof  to  the  channel  of  Speculative  Religious  thought. 

The  three  philosophers  who  directly  succeeded  Descartes  were 
Locke,  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz,  the  great  representatives  of  empiri- 
cism, Pantheism  and  individualism.  Locke  gave  up  the  Onto- 
logical Proof  along  with  innate  ideas,  Spinoza  turned  it  to  the 
service  of  speculative  Pantheism,  and  Leibnitz  alone  made  any 
useful  contribution  to  it.  He  said : 4  "It  proves  that  assuming 
that  God  is  possible  He  exists."  In  other  words  he  introduced 
the  principle  of  non-contradiction.  "  Being,"  according  to  Leibnitz,5 
"  is  that  the  concept  of  which,  involves  something  positive,  or  that 
which  can  by  us  be  conceived,  provided  that  which  we  conceive  is 

1  Descartes,  "Principles  of  Philosophy,"  trans,  by  J.  Vietch,  Sec.  XVII. 

2 Descartes,  "Principles  of  Philosophy,"  p.  125. 

3 Descartes,  "Principles  of  Philosophy."     Introduction,  p.  24. 

4 Leibnitz,  "New  Essays,"  Bk.  4,  ch.  10,  p.  540. 

5 Leibnitz,  "New  Essays,"  Bk.  4,  ch.  10,  p.  717. 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD   AND    EPISTEMOLOGY.  13 

possible."  Most  important  of  all  he  worked  out  the  demonstra- 
tion according  to  the  principle  of  non-contradiction  that  the  con- 
cept of  God  is  possible  and  concludes  that  the  a  priori  proof  of 
his  existence  is  valid.1 

The  argument,  with  the  names  most  closely  identified  with  it,  is 
now  before  us.  Its  requirements  have  not  been  satisfactorily  ful- 
filled. This  is  all  that  an  historical  survey  needs  to  show.  One 
or  two  further  facts,  however,  are  of  interest.  In  the  first  place 
a  long  list  of  celebrated  names  could  be  arrayed  in  favor  of  the 
cogency  of  this  form  of  proof.  They  have  accepted  it  in  the 
interest  of  speculative  inquiry  either  Theistic,  Deistic  or  Panthe- 
istic. On  the  other  hand  Empiricists  and  the  transcendental 
Idealists  have  consistently  rejected  it.  In  a  general  way  it  might 
be  considered  as  acceptable  to  theologians  and  worthless  to  scien- 
tists. Our  position  is  that  neither  dogmatism  nor  scepticism  has 
grasped  its  full  significance  as  an  expression  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness. Its  original  relation  to  practical  religious  experience 
has  been  forgotten.  This  is  especially  apparent  in  Kant's  criti- 
cism. He  included  the  Ontological  Proof  along  with  the  Cosmo- 
logical  and  Psychophysical  arguments  under  the  Transcendental 
Dialectic.  They  are  exercises  of  pure  reason.  Having  performed 
this  feat  by  what  he  had  well  named  Transcendental  Topic,  he 
had  rendered  all  alike  sufficiently  fruitless.  Nevertheless  by  a 
method  precisely  similar  to  that  followed  by  Anselm  although 
infinitely  narrower,  he  arrived  at  an  Ontological  proof  of  the 
existence  of  God,  by  way  of  the  Practical  Reason.  Paulsen,  in 
his  recent  life  of  Kant  says  : 2  "  Whoever  ascribes  absolute  intel- 
ligible reality  and  unity  to  the  intelligible  world,  naturally  cannot 
deny  the  Ontological  proof  of  the  existence  of  God."  Kant's 
criticism  applies  to  the  proof,  therefore,  only  in  its  speculative 
and  not  in  its  practical  capacity.  Yet,  the  weight  of  Kant's 
influence  in  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  no  doubt,  did 
much  to  cause  the  Ontological  Proof  to  be  abandoned  as  a  support 
of  Speculative  Theism. 

'Erdmann,  "Lib.  Op.  Philos.,"  pp.  443-445. 
2 Paulsen,  "Life  of  Kant,"  p.  223. 


14  THE    IDEA    OF   GOD. 

On  the  other  hand  the  progress  of  the  psychological  and  anthro- 
pological study  of  religion  together  with  the  observations  of  con- 
sciousness and  the  processes  of  religious  development  are  forcing 
a  return  to  this  method  of  proof.  Mr.  A.  E.  Taylor  claims l  that 
"  the  religious  experience  in  its  permanent  essence  is  an  insepar- 
able element  in  a  comprehensive  human  experience  of  the  world  " 
and  "  in  the  sense  that  the  claims  of  religion  to  represent  an  in- 
tegral element  in  a  full  human  experience  of  the  world  is  justified 
by  the  facts  of  life,  the  '  Ontological  Proof7  seems  valid  and 
irrefragible." 

Our  Problem  now  is  before  us  with  a  sufficient  outline  of  its 
historical  connections.  It  is  high  time  to  address  ourselves  to  the 
task  we  have  outlined.  The  first  part  of  the  undertaking  must 
be  to  find  a  self-consistent  concept  of  being.  The  way  at  this 
point  has  been  prepared  for  us  by  Professor  Royce  in  his  analysis 
of  the  four  historic  concepts  of  being  and  we  will  thankfully  ac- 
cept his  assistance. 2 

II. 

CONCEPT  AND  BEING. 

Common  sense  perceives  a  difference  between  thought  and 
things.  The  impression  and  the  object  which  gives  the  impression, 
the  idea  and  the  ideate,  what  Anselm  meant  by  "  esse  in  intel- 
lectu  "  and  "  esse  in  re  "  or  whatever  terms  may  be  used  to  express 
the  difference,  it  is  sufficiently  determined.  It  was  this  difference 
which  Anselm  appeared  to  disregard  when  he  passed  from  the 
"  id  quo  majus,  etc.,"  of  his  thought  to  the  "  Hoc  es  Tu  "  of  his 
experience.  The  question  arises  —  how  is  this  procedure  to  be  jus- 
tified ?  How  can  an  object  discovered  by  the  mind  ever  be  recog- 
nized as  identical  with  an  object  known  by  experience?  The 
answer  to  this  question  is  far  from  being  easy,  it  constitutes  the  es- 
sential difference  between  Realism  and  Mysticism,  Critical  Rational- 
ism and  Idealism.  It  may  be  well  at  the  beginning  of  our  discus- 

1  A.  E.  Taylor,  "The  Problem  of  Conduct,"  pp.  443-444. 
2Koyce,  "  The  World  and  the  Individual,"  Vol.  I. 


THE    IDEA    OF   GOD   AND    EPISTEMOLOGY.  15 

sion  to  set  before  ourselves  briefly  the  meaning  of  these  four 
theories  of  Being  as  Professor  Royce  has  defined  them. 

1 .  Realism  asserts  that  Being  is  independent  of  ideas. 

2.  Mysticism  defines  Being  as  an  absolute  and  simple  unity 
which  quenches  thought  through  the  presence  of  a  single  and  ab- 
solutely immediate  truth.     It  is  a  theory  of  the  immediacy  of  true 
knowledge.     It  identifies  Being  with  the  true  meaning  of  ideas. 

3.  Critical  Rationalism  is  an  attempt  to  identify  the  validity  of 
the  idea  with  the  true  being  of  the  fact  defined  by  the  idea. 

4.  Idealism  affirms  that  "  Reality  is  a  will  concretely  embodied 
in  a  life."     "  The  object  according  to  this  theory  is  only  the  com- 
pletely embodied  will  of  the  idea."     What  is,  presents  the  fulfill- 
ment of  the  whole  purpose  of  the  very  idea  that  now   seeks 
Reality.1 

Realism.  —  With  these  definitions  to  guide  us  let  us  begin  our 
examination  of  the  various  theories  of  knowledge  which  attempt 
to  answer  our  question.  Realism  is  the  first  to  demand  attention. 
It  takes  either  the  form  of  monism  or  pluralism.  As  an  example 
of  monistic  Realism  we  may  turn  to  Spinoza.  He  represents 
reality  as  one  substance  with  its  two  attributes,  thought  and  exten- 
sion. Now  hear  what  he  has  to  say  : 2  "So  long  as  we  consider 
things  as  modes  of  thinking,  we  must  explain  the  order  of  the 
whole  of  nature  .  .  .  through  the  attribute  of  thought  only.  And, 
in  so  far  as  we  consider  things  as  modes  of  extension,  we  must 
explain  the  whole  of  nature  through  the  attribute  of  extension 
only."  Thus  thought  and  extension  follow  two  parallel  lines 
which  meet  only  in  infinity.  The  question  then  arises  —  "  How 
can  any  one  be  sure  that  he  has  ideas  which  agree  with  their  ob- 
jects ?  " 3  To  this  question  he  replies  :  "  Truth  is  its  own  stand- 
ard." The  real  answer,  however,  is  the  very  substance  of  Pan- 
theism :  "Our  mind,  in  so  far  as  it  perceives  things  truly,  is 
part  of  the  infinite  intellect  of  God ;  therefore,  the  clear  and  dis- 
tinct ideas  of  the  mind  are  as  necessarily  true  as  the  ideas  of  God." 

1  Royce,  "  The  World  and  the  Individual,"  I,  pp.  143,  227,  355,  359. 

2  Spinoza,  "  Ethics,"  Part  II,  Prop.  VII,  note. 
3 Spinoza,  "Ethics,"  Part  II,  Prop.  43,  note. 


16  THE   IDEA   OF   GOD. 

In  other  words,  God  serves  the  purpose  of  a  clearing  house  of 
ideas.  This  thought  permeates  Spinoza's  discussion  of  the  nature 
and  origin  of  the  mind.  But  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that 
we  would  search  in  vain  in  our  consciousness  to  find  anything 
which  would  correspond  with  this  purely  speculative  theory  of 
knowledge. 

The  pluralistic  branch  of  Realism  is  represented  by  the  Em- 
pirical School  of  thought.  Certain  matters  of  fact  are  assumed 
and  ideas  are  derived  from  them  in  the  course  of  experience. 
According  to  Locke :  "  The  understanding  does  not  have  the 
least  glimmering  of  any  idea  which  it  doth  not  receive  from  sensa- 
tion or  reflection."  This  renders  the  concept  dependent  upon 
the  object.  Hume,  however,  says  with  regard  to  the  impressions 
received  by  the  senses  :  "  It  will  always  be  impossible  to  decide 
with  certainty,  whether  they  arise  immediately  from  the  object,  or 
are  produced  by  the  creative  power  of  the  mind,  or  are  derived 
from  the  Author  of  our  being." 2  And  in  the  chapter  on  the  Idea 
of  Existence  he  adds  :  "  We  never  really  advance  a  step  beyond 
ourselves,  nor  can  perceive  any  kind  of  existence  but  those  per- 
ceptions, which  have  appeared  in  that  narrow  compass."  These 
then  are  the  limits  of  Empiricism,  Locke  deriving  all  ideas  from 
sensations  and  reflection  and  Hume  shutting  up  all  experience  to 
perceptions. 

There  is  no  hope  then  of  finding  an  answer  to  our  question 
either  in  Monistic  or  Pluralistic  Realism.  Thought  and  things 
stand  independent  of  each  other.  As  we  have  already  seen  the 
monistic  answer  is  given  at  the  expense  of  Pantheism.  The 
Religion  of  empiricism  is  even  worse.  It  banished  the  idea  of  God 
to  the  realm  of  pure  reason  where  it  survived  as  a  form  of  meta- 
physical speculation.  Locke  and  Hume  both  gave  up  the  Onto- 
logical  Proof,  the  one  embracing  a  Cosmological  or  Teleological 
argument  and  the  other  abandoning  all  proofs.  Religion  under 
these  circumstances  lost  its  experimental  significance  and  became 
an  affair  of  Reason.  Locke's  Epistemology  was  necessarily  fatal 

1  Locke,  "Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding,"  p.  84. 
2 Hume,  "  Treatise  of  Human  Nature." 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD   AND   EPISTEMOLOGY.  17 

to  Natural  Religion  which  rested  upon  a  theory  of  innate  ideas 
and  Hume's  Scepticism  was  subversive  of  all  Religion. 

Such  a  theory  is  not  only  destructive  for  Religion  ;  it  would 
destroy  the  entire  unity  of  the  universe  itself.  If  an  idea  and  an 
object  are  entirely  independent  entities  they  can  and  must  exist 
each  without  the  other  else  their  independence  is  an  illusion. 
"  They  have  nothing  in  common,"  says  Royce,  "  neither  quality 
nor  worth,  neither  form  nor  content,  neither  truth  nor  meaning- 
No  causality  links  them."  And  if  this  is  true  of  the  relation  of 
concept  and  reality  in  a  sensible  world  it  must  be  equally  true  of 
an  intelligible  world.  Concept  and  reality  cannot  exist  in  inde- 
pendence. 

Mysticism. — If  the  facts  of  life  in  any  way  justified  the  theory 
of  Mysticism  it  would  not  be  necessary  to  continue  our  investiga- 
tions further.  The  immediate  intuition  of  Reality  would  refute 
all  gainsaying.  Such  a  theory,  however,  is  out  of  harmony  with 
both  history  and  experience.  Try  as  man  does,  he  so  far  has  not 
been  able  to  cease  either  his  fragmentary  method  of  perception  or 
"  his  deadly  doing."  We  have  to  take  life  as  it  is  and  the  great 
task  is  to  make  it  what  we  would  like  it  to  be.  The  Ontological 
Argument,  therefore,  acts  as  a  corrective  to  Mysticism  in  that  it 
shows  due  regard  for  experience  and  God's  revelation  of  himself 
to  man  in  the  progress  of  history.  The  short  way  from  concept 
to  Being  by  means  of  intuition  has  not,  so  far,  been  successfully 
traveled. 

Critical  Rationalism.  —  The  discriminating  intellect  of  Kant 
perceived  the  strength  and  weakness  of  Realism  ;  he,  therefore, 
sought  to  escape  the  difficulty  by  weaving  together  Empirical 
Realism  with  Transcendental  Idealism.  This  combination  ren- 
ders his  system  that  much  harder  to  understand.  In  the  very 
beginning  of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  he  links  experience 
with  sensation.  At  the  same  time  he  finds  in  experience  other 
kinds  of  knowledge  which  must  have  their  origin  a  priori.  In 
addition  to  these  two  kinds  of  knowledge  Reason  introduces  a 
third  by  means  of  concepts  to  which  experience  can  never  supply 
corresponding  objects.  This  threefold  division  of  the  kinds  of 


18  THE    IDEA    OF   GOD. 

knowledge  to  which  there  must  correspond  a  like  division  in 
the  knowing  subject  constitutes  the  foundation  of  Kant's  great 
work.  Having  once  established  this  division  it  is  easy  to  proceed 
backward  and  forward  from  Empirical  Realism  to  Transcendental 
Idealism.  The  understanding  combines  the  facts  of  experience 
into  a  world  which  is  absolutely  phenomenal  and  therefore 
transcendental.  At  the  same  time  the  possibility  of  experience 
determines  this  phenomenal  world  to  such  an  extent  that  it  may 
be  called  empirically  realistic.  In  other  words,  Kant  never  got 
beyond  the  boundary  line  drawn  by  Hume  which  limits  knowledge 
to  perception. 

It  was  without  question  a  scientific  procedure  on  the  part  of 
these  two  great  thinkers  to  isolate  a  faculty  of  the  mind  and  ex- 
amine it  alone  ;  but,  by  so  doing  they  severed  its  relations  and 
rendered  it  to  that  extent  mutilated.  If  we  remember  this  fact 
when  we  are  examining  Transcendental  Idealism  we  shall  not  be 
so  easily  carried  along  by  its  plausibility.  Let  it  once  be  admit- 
ted, for  example,  that  the  possibility  of  experience  is  determined 
by  sensation  and  the  understanding,  and  that  the  concept  of  God 
is  an  ideal  of  Pure  Reason,  by  which  we  understand  the  formal 
sphere  of  thought,  then  the  possibility  of  giving  a  content  to  the 
concept  of  God  is  given  up.  Such  an  admission  forever  destroys 
the  possibility  of  a  connection  between  the  God  of  Reason  and  the 
God  of  Religion.  To  say  "  Hoc  es  Tu  "  is  always  precluded. 
But  when  we  remember  that  all  experience  has  a  validity  accord- 
ing to  its  kind  and  that  one  faculty  cannot  stand  alone,  the 
severed  connection  is  reestablished  again. 

Now  let  us  see  how  Kant  attacks  the  Anselmic  problem.  How 
does  he  relate  concept  and  reality  ?  Take  a  passage  in  which  he 
is  speaking  of  objects  of  sense.  He  says  : l  "  Hitherto  it  has 
been  supposed  that  all  our  knowledge  must  conform  to  the  ob- 
jects ;  but  under  that  supposition,  all  attempts'"  to  establish  any- 
thing about  them  a  priori,  by  means  of  concepts,  and  thus  to  en- 
large our  knowledge,  have  come  to  nothing.  ...  If  the  intuition 
had  to  conform  to  the  constitution  of  the  objects,  I  do  not  see 

"Critique  of  Pure  Keason,"  p.  693. 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD    AND    EPISTEMOLOGY.  19 

how  we  can  know  anything  of  it  a  priori  ;  bat  if  the  object  con- 
forms to  the  constitution  of  our  faculty  of  intuition,  I  can  very 
well  conceive  such  a  possibility." 

The  burden  of  this  argument  is  to  show  that  since  the  mind 
introduces  a  priori  concepts  into  objects  of  knowledge,  therefore, 
these  objects  so  far  as  known  constitute  phenomena  and  the  thing- 
in-itself — the  Real  —  is  unknown.  The  conclusion  is  that  "the 
unconditioned  must  not  be  looked  for  in  things  so  far  as  we  know 
them  but  only  in  so  far  as  we  do  not  know  them."  The  phe- 
nomenal world  embracing  every  possible  object  of  knowledge  is  at 
hand,  and  outside  and  beyond  the  reach  of  experience  stands  the 
unconditioned  constituting  the  intelligible  world.  In  the  Kantian 
epistemology  knowledge  is  limited  absolutely  to  the  realm  of 
concept  and  on  the  other  hand  Reality  embracing  the  intelligible 
world  is  unknowable.  At  the  same  time  Kant  ever  regarded  the 
manifold  of  objects  composing  the  phenomenal  world  as  objects  of 
experience.  And  while  these  objects  of  experience  and  possible 
experience,  are  not  to  be  taken  as  things-in-themselves  they  are 
none  the  less  real.  In  this  latter  sense  Kant  called  himself  an 
empirical  Realist.  But  in  the  sense  that  all  knowledge  is  phenom- 
enal he  called  himself  a  transcendental  Idealist.  Such  a  theory 
is  an  advance  upon  pure  Realism.  It  introduces  a  relation  be- 
tween concept  and  reality  in  the  phenomenal  world  even  if  it  does 
deny  the  possibility  of  communication  between  the  Noumenal 
and  Phenomenal  worlds.  It  requires  of  a  concept  that  it  must  be 
valid,  that  the  concept  and  its  object  must  agree,  though  both 
concept  and  object  are  alike  phenomena. 

This  then  is  the  answer  which  Critical  Rationalism  gives  to  our 
question.  It  has  received  a  tolerably  general  acceptance  but  not 
without  hesitation.  We  are  vaguely  conscious  of  its  insufficiency. 
The  question  asked  by  Spinoza  "  How  can  we  know?  "  is  avoided 
by  limiting  the  sphere  of  knowledge.  Therefore  in  spite  of  his 
transcendental  Idealism  Kant  continued  to  be  a  Realist.  The 
ding  an  sich  for  him  was  ever  an  independent  Reality.  When 
these  facts  concerning  the  Kantian  theory  of  knowledge  are  settled 
in  our  minds  we  are  prepared  for  his  criticism  of  the  Ontological 


20  THE   IDEA   OF    GOD. 

Proof.  In  such  a  system  an  ens  realissimum  could  be  necessary 
only  as  a  formal  condition  of  thought.  It  is  a  purely  regulative 
concept.  The  conclusions  concerning  a  greatest  conceivable  being 
are  rational  deductions  of  logic.  But  when  an  account  of  reli- 
gious experience  is  demanded  the  system  breaks  down  as  Kant 
was  conscious  of  its  break  down  in  the  presence  of  a  categorical 
imperative.  The  Ontological  Proof  therefore  has  this  advantage 
that  while  it  does  connect  with  the  Ideal  of  pure  reason  it  also 
connects  with  the  conscious  experience  of  a  Religious  life. 

Kant's  Criticism.  —  Let  us  look  now  at  Kant's  criticism  of  our 
Proof  in  the  light  of  what  we  have  here  stated.  He  begins  by 
asserting  *  that  "  the  concept  of  an  absolutely  necessary  Being  is  a 
concept  of  pure  reason,  a  mere  idea,  the  objective  reality  of  which 
is  by  no  means  proved  by  the  fact  that  reason  requires  it."  Then 
he  proceeds  to  inquire  concerning  the  conditions  which  make  it 
necessary  to  consider  the  nonexistence  of  a  thing  as  absolutely 
inconceivable.  The  inadequacy  of  examples  of  absolute  necessity 
such  as  that  a  triangle  must  have  three  angles  is  immediately  ap- 
parent. The  necessity  is  in  the  judgment  not  in  the  things. 
There  is  no  contradiction  in  admitting  the  nonexistence  of  both 
the  triangle  and  its  angles.  This  is  true,  but  to  conceive  of  the 
nonexistence  of  the  concept  of  a  triangle  when  it  has  once  been 
conceived  is  not  possible.  The  reality  of  the  triangle  may  be 
dropped  but  not  the  reality  of  the  concept.  On  the  other  hand 
the  very  peculiarity  of  the  Ontological  concept  is  that  we  cannot 
conceive  the  nonexistence  of  either  the  concept  or  its  object. 
Kant  persists  in  putting  the  concept  of  God  into  the  same  category 
with  the  concept  of  things  while  the  very  nature  of  such  a  concept 
requires  that  it  should  be  individual  and  not  general,  singular  and 
therefore  without  comparison.  The  analogy  of  triangles,  real  and 
possible  Thalers  or  mountains  and  valleys  will  not  hold,  for  in  the 
case  of  triangles  we  are  dealing  with  mathematical  concepts  which 
are  empty  of  content  and  in  the  case  of  mountains  we  are  dealing 
with  a  general  concept  with  a  possible  content,  while  in  thinking 
of  God  we  are  dealing  with  an  individual  concept  which  must 

,  "Critique  of  Pure  Keason,"  p.  477. 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD    AND    EPISTEMOLOGY.  21 

have  a  real  content.  To  conceive  an  individual  concept  without 
an  object  is  impossible.  So  soon  as  the  object  disappears  it  is  a 
general  concept.  I  have  already  affirmed  that  the  proposition  — 
God  exists — is  an  analytical  judgment.  When  I  make  this  asser- 
tion according  to  Kant  I  am  compelled  to  determine  whether  the 
concept  is  God  or  whether  I  deduce  his  existence  from  internal 
possibility.  In  its  purpose  and  intention  my  concept  is  God  but 
that  is  not  enough.  Consciousness  reveals  to  me  that  something 
exists.  Anything  is  an  ens  realissimum  in  comparison  with  non- 
existence.  The  greatest  conceivable  being  therefore  is  a  real  being 
because  no  figment  of  the  imagination  is  so  great  as  what  is  real. 
To  be  sure  such  an  argument  does  not  take  us  beyond  Pantheism 
so  far  as  the  content  of  our  idea  is  concerned  but  it  gives  us  a  foot- 
hold in  Reality,  and  Religious  experience  must  furnish  a  content 
to  the  concept.  I  am  willing  to  admit  therefore  that  for  matters 
of  fact  in  general  every  proposition  involving  existence  is  synthet- 
ical but  I  still  assert  that  the  concept  of  Absolute  Being  involves 
existence.  To  be  more  explicit  our  knowledge  of  things  depends 
upon  the  possibility  of  experience  but  for  our  knowledge  of  self  as 
Descartes  discovered  and  our  knowledge  of  God  according  to 
Anselrn's  argument  we  are  thrown  back  upon  consciousness  as  an 
original  faculty. 

In  this  examination  of  Kant  we  have  allowed  ourselves  to 
become  involved  in  the  same  speculative  method  which  we  have 
deprecated.  This,  however,  is  unavoidable  in  this  part  of  our 
subject,  the  Proof  must  be  sustained  or  it  will  have  no  place  for  a 
practical  content.  If  Critical  Rationalism  does  not  tell  us  how  to 
pass  from  concept  to  reality  we  do  not  therefore  give  up  in  despair. 
One  favorable  sign  also  is  here  to  be  noted.  The  critical  philos- 
ophy is  psychological.  It  looks  for  the  possibilities  of  knowledge 
within,  in  the  precincts  of  the  mind.  If  this  at  first  appeared  to 
be  fatal  to  Religion  it  was  only  apparently  so.  Religion  also  is 
within.  It  too  has  experiences  which  come  clamoring  into  the 
manifold  of  phenomena.  An  increased  attention  to  Psychology, 
therefore,  could  not  fail  to  uncover  the  religious  precincts  of  the 
soul.  When  we  have  finished  our  inquiry  concerning  concept  and 
reality  this  subject  will  be  attended  to  at  greater  length. 


22  THE   IDEA    OF   GOD. 

Idealism.  —  Realism  with  its  impossible  independence  of  con- 
cept and  object  has  failed  to  help  us.  Critical  Rationalism  sug- 
gests that  the  concept  must  be  valid  for  the  reality  which  it  rep- 
resents but  it  shuts  up  concepts  to  sense  and  understanding  thus 
circumscribing  knowable  phenomena.  Mysticism  on  the  other 
hand  depreciates  the  usefulness  of  experience.  We  must  turn, 
therefore,  to  Idealism  as  a  last  resort.  But  before  listening  to  the 
answer  of  Idealism  concerning  the  relation  of  concept  and  Reality 
let  us  revert  to  our  analysis  of  a  religious  consciousness.  We 
there  discovered  three  original  factors.  Every  religious  emotion 
is  inseparably  combined  with  an  idea.  Fear  and  faith  alike  sub- 
tend the  idea  of  an  object  to  which  they  are  directed.  And  every 
idea  enfolds  a  purpose,  a  meaning,  an  intention  or  a  will.  It  is 
at  heart  an  intention  with  an  end  in  view.  With  this  threefold- 
ness  of  religious  consciousness  before  our  mind  we  are  prepared 
more  completely  to  study  the  relation  of  concept  to  Being  or  the 
religious  idea  to  its  Object  in  the  light  of  Idealism. 

In  the  first  place  Idealism  holds  that  an  Idea  is  related  to  its 
object.  The  object  itself  may  be  material  or  imaginary,  it  may 
be  sensible  or  only  intelligible  but  whatever  it  is,  some  tie  must 
connect  it  with  its  concept.  And  in  the  second  place  this  theory 
holds  that  no  objects  stand  alone.  In  some  way  or  other  there  is 
a  unity  of  all  things  —  a  linkedness  of  all  facts.  Mere  likeness, 
then,  is  not  a  sufficient  tie  to  connect  an  idea  with  its  object.  Two 
things  as  like  as  coins  struck  from  the  same  die  may  exist  in  ab- 
solute independence.  In  the  third  place  then,  Idealism  finds  the 
only  sufficient  account  of  the  relation  of  the  object  and  the  idea 
in  the  purpose  of  the  idea.  It  is  the  intention  of  the  idea  both 
to  seek  its  object  and  to  seek  its  point  of  likeness  to  its  object. 
It  is  true  that  the  object  does  determine  the  idea.  It  is  the  will 
of  the  idea  to  be  determined  but  just  because  of  this  relation  the 
idea  and  the  object  cannot  exist  independently. 

Experience.  —  This  brings  us  to  the  realm  of  experience.  So 
long  as  we  are  dealing  with  the  objects  of  sense  the  object  deter- 
mines the  idea  in  its  validity.  But  experience  reveals  the  impor- 
tant fact  that  the  object  found  never  fully  satisfies  the  meaning  of 


THE    IDEA    OF   GOD    AND    EPISTEMOLOGY.  23 

the  idea.  The  possibility  of  experience  therefore  rather  than  the 
experience  itself  constitutes  the  determining  power  of  objects  over 
ideas.  And  since  the  idea  has  a  purpose  it  can  never  find  an  ob- 
ject completely  fulfilling  the  requirement  of  validity  until  it  finds 
that  purpose  manifested  in  a  vital  reality.  In  other  words  the 
idea  is  the  expression  of  a  finite  self  seeking  its  fulfillment  in  an 
Absolute  Self.  And  "  the  Being  to  which  any  idea  refers  is  sim- 
ply the  will  of  the  idea  more  determinately  and  more  completely 
expressed." l  "  The  finite  idea  does  seek  its  own  Other.  It  con- 
sciously means  this  Other.  And  it  can  seek  only  what  it  con- 
sciously means  to  seek.  But  it  consciously  means  to  seek  precisely 
that  determination  of  its  own  will  to  singleness  and  finality  of 
expression  which  shall  leave  it  no  Other  yet  beyond,  and  still  to 
seek." 

Let  us  see  now  how  this  conception  of  the  relation  of  Concept 
and  Being  agrees  with  the  argument  of  the  Ontological  Proof. 
The  idea  there  is  called  — "id  quo  majus  cogitari  nequit,"  the 
greatest  conceivable  Being.  The  purpose  of  this  idea  is  to  find  its 
object,  its  Other.  It  turns  to  the  God  of  religious  experience  and 
says  "  Hoc  es  Tu.  "  In  other  words  it  identifies  the  God  of  faith 
with  the  God  of  Reason.  Experience  furnishes  a  content  for  the 
concept  of  God  just  as  truly  as  experience  furnishes  a  content  for 
any  finite  reality.  The  process  is  precisely  the  same,  the  only 
difference  is  in  the  faculties  involved.  By  this  I  mean  that  every 
experience  is  fragmentary.  It  only  partly  fulfills  its  concept.  The 
possibility  of  experience  is  the  only  complete  determination  of  a 
finite  concept.  And  in  a  like  manner  religious  experience  does 
not  fulfill  the  concept  of  God.  It  is  only  fragmentary.  Never- 
theless it  embodies  the  will  of  the  Ontological  idea, 

1  Koyce,  "The  World  and  the  Individual,"  p.  353. 


PART  II. 

THE  IDEA  OF  GOD  AND   THE  PSYCHOLOGY 
OF  RELIGION. 


I. 

THE  RELATION  OF  RELIGION  TO  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Religion  and  Psychology.  —  The  examination  of  the  various 
theories  of  knowledge  brought  out  the  fact  that  the  concept  of  a 
most  perfect  being  is  dependent  upon  religious  experience  for  its 
content.  It  is  necessary  therefore  to  inquire  what  this  experience 
is  and  to  listen  to  the  evidence  of  Psychology  concerning  its  worth. 
The  spheres  of  Religion  and  Psychology  owing  to  their  functions 
and  subject  matter  always  overlap.  Every  form  of  experience 
comes  within  the  realm  of  Psychology  and  a  Religion  on  the  other 
hand  without  an  experience  is  impossible.  At  the  same  time  Re- 
ligion precedes  Psychology  and  furnishes  the  facts  for  its  investi- 
gation. Religion  is  a  part  of  conscious  life  and  Psychology  is  a 
science  which  treats  of  the  laws  and  forms  and  methods  of  con- 
scious life. 

In  a  certain  sense  it  might  be  said  that  Religion  has  a  Psy- 
chology of  its  own.  As  an  inner  experience  it  requires  reflection 
and  introspection,  and  to  some  extent  it  always  attempts  to  give 
definitions  to  those  inner  powers  and  seats  of  the  emotions  which 
we  think  of  under  the  general  term,  soul.  On  the  other  hand  a 
more  fully  developed  Psychology  serves  as  a  guiding  principle  for 
Religion.  In  this  way  the  two  react  upon  each  other  and  very 
much  depends  upon  which  has  the  predominating  influence. 
Buddhism  furnishes  an  example  of  a  Religion  in  which  the  Psy- 
chological element  predominates.  In  its  pure  form  it  is  little  more 
than  a  Psychology.  Christianity,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  Religion 

24 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   RELIGION.  25 

which  takes  Psychology  into  its  service.  The  Sacred  Writings  of 
the  Christians  and  Jews  show  a  deep  psychological  penetration. 
Body  and  spirit  are  distinguished,  the  value  of  the  soul  is  declared 
and  a  valuable  analysis  of  the  inner  life  is  apparent.  But  all  this 
is  in  theservice  of  Religion  and  a  part  of  religious  develop- 
ment. 

It  is  quite  another  thing  when  all  Religion  is  assumed  to  be 
pathological  —  "  a  sick  man's  dream."  "  The  psychologist,  ob- 
serving the  dependence  of  mental  states  on  bodily  conditions  "  and 
seeing  the  various  psychic  phenomena  which  Religion  invariably 
includes,  may  be  led  to  conclude  that  it  is  altogether  an  internal 
matter  and  that  he  can  account  for  it  as  a  psycho-genetic  phe- 
nomena. To  a  person  floundering  in  the  vortex  of  such  a  conclu- 
sion Professor  James  says  : l  "It  is  not  the  origin  with  which  we 
are  concerned,  but  the  way  in  which  it  works  on  the  whole." 
Such  a  severing  of  the  fruit  from  the  root,  however,  must  strike  a 
serious  reader  as  a  violent  proceeding.  At  such  a  time  the  Onto- 
logical  Idea  appears  as  a  regulative  principle  and  directs  attention 
to  the  necessary  connections  between  things  psychical  and  the 
ultra  psychical. 

In  the  examination  of  the  relation  of  the  Ontological  Proof  to 
the  various  concepts  of  Being  a  large  part  of  our  effort  was  spent 
in  an  endeavor  to  rescue  Religion  from  rationalism.  We  saw 
how  the  various  theories  of  knowledge  rendered  religious  thought 
fruitless  by  turning  it  into  speculative  channels.  Materialism, 
Deism,  Theism  and  Agnosticism  have  appeared  as  the  outgrowth 
of  speculative  inquiry  severed  from  experience.  The  Ontological 
Proof  there  furnished  us  a  clue  by  which  these  speculative  diffi- 
culties could  be  avoided.  It  joins  together  what  we  must  never 
put  asunder  —  religious  thought  and  religious  life.  Now  in  the 
face  of  an  attack  by  materialistic  Psychology  our  Proof  again 
serves  us;  since,  it  links  experience  with  thought  as  well  as 
thought  with  experience.  Professor  Flint  in  the  Baird  Lectures 
says 2  of  the  a  priori  arguments  :  "  They  help  us  steadily  to  con- 

1  James,  "  Varieties  of  Keligious  Experience,"  p.  13. 
2 Flint,  "Baird  Lectures,  Theism,"  p.  288. 


26  THE   IDEA   OF   GOD. 

template  and  patiently  to  consider  such  abstract  and  difficult 
thoughts  as  those  of  being,  absolute  being,  cause,  substance,  per- 
fection, infinity,  eternity,  etc."  Such  mental  gymnastics  no  doubt 
have  their  usefulness  in  developing  an  athletic  mind  but  they 
are  about  as  valuable  as  learning  the  Shorter  Catechism  backward, 
so  far  as  practical  Religion  is  concerned.  They  are  worse  than 
that  because  they  pervert  what  they  seem  to  contemplate  from  its 
true  significance.  If  we  are  seeking  an  ulterior  value  in  the 
Ontological  Proof,  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  Psychological  turn  it 
gave  to  thought  and  the  relation  it  establishes  between  thought 
and  experience.  It  is  introspective,  and  when  attention  is  once 
directed  to  that  which  is  within,  a  large  field  is  at  once  opened 
for  investigation.  It  is  true  that  the  first  fruit  of  this  research 
was  largely  the  logomachy  of  Scholasticism,  but  later  Descartes 
searched  deeper  than  the  ideas  with  which  the  schoolmen  quibbled 
and  discovered  consciousness  itself,  the  connecting  link  between 
thought  and  Being.  The  close  connection  between  this  discovery, 
which  is  the  starting  point  of  modern  philosophy  and  psychology, 
and  the  Ontological  Proof  could  not  have  been  accidental.  This 
is  apparent  in  the  Meditations.  Hear  what  he  says  : l  "Is  there 
any  truth  more  clear  than  the  existence  of  a  Supreme  Being,  or  of 
God,  seeing  that  it  is  to  his  essence  alone  that  existence  pertains  ? 
And  although  the  right  perception  of  this  truth  has  cost  me  much 
close  thinking  nevertheless  at  present  I  feel  not  only  as  certain  of 
it  as  of  what  I  deem  most  certain,  but  I  remark  further  that  the 
certitude  of  all  other  truths  is  so  absolutely  dependent  on  it,  that 
without  this  knowledge  it  is  impossible  ever  to  know  anything 
perfectly."  It  was  "the  close  thinking"  called  forth  by  the 
Ontological  Proof  which  led  by  way  of  doubt  to  the  discovery  of 
consciousness  and  thus  to  the  establishment  of  the  truth  itself. 
But  Descartes'  purpose  was  speculative  rather  than  practical  and 
instead  of  holding  fast  to  the  relation  of  consciousness  and  the  con- 
cept of  a  most  perfect  being,  he  followed  the  concept  to  a  cause 
which  must  be  greater  than  its  concept  and  used  Consciousness  as 
the  starting  point  of  a  rational  Psychology. 

1  Descartes,  "  Meditations,"  V,  p.  148. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF   RELIGION.  27 

The  Psychologists.  —  In  this  way  Psychology  was  born  of 
Religion  and  was  separated  from  it.  In  the  hands  of  Locke, 
Hume,  Kant,  et  al.,  Psychology  assumed  the  field  of  experience 
and  religion  was  restricted  to  rational  spheres  of  speculation. 
Hume  classes  himself  with l  "  that  Species  of  Philosophers  which 
consider  man  in  the  light  of  a  reasonable  being  and  endeavor  to 
form  his  understanding  more  than  cultivate  his  manners.  (Who) 
regard  human  nature  as  a  subject  of  speculation,  and  with  a  nar- 
row scrutiny  examine  it,  in  order  to  find  those  principles  which 
regulate  our  understanding,  excite  our  sentiments,  and  make  us 
approve  or  blame  any  particular  object,  action,  or  behavior."  On 
the  other  hand  he  says : 2  "  Examine  the  religious  principles, 
which  have,  in  fact,  prevailed  in  the  world.  You  will  scarcely 
be  persuaded  that  they  are  anything  but  sick  men's  dreams." 
Thus  human  nature  was  magnified  and  Religion  despised.  It  was 
impossible  that  such  conditions  should  continue.  A  better  Psy- 
chology and  a  more  appreciative  conception  of  Religion  have  suc- 
ceeded and  their  relation  to  each  other  is  increasingly  helpful.  No 
reverent  student  of  Religion  can  refuse  to  welcome  the  contribu- 
tions of  such  psychologists  as  Wundt,  Hoifding,  James  and  Meyer. 
Their  work  is  invaluable  and  no  solution  of  the  Problems  of 
Religion  is  now  to  be  expected  without  a  thorough  psychology  of 
religious  experience. 

One  other  point  is  to  be  noted  concerning  the  relation  of  Reli- 
gion to  Psychology.  Various  authorities  on  the  Philosophy  of 
Religion  have  endeavored  to  connect  Religion  with  one  or  other 
faculty  of  the  soul.  Schleiermacher's  definition  3  of  Religion  as 
an  absolute  feeling  of  dependence  on  God  gave  undue  prominence 
to  the  emotional  element  of  Religion.  Deism  and  Rationalism  in 
general  magnify  the  intellectual  element.  Von  Hartmann  gives 
prominence  to  the  will.  Such  expressions 4  as  "  Der  religiose 
Wille  ist  das  A  und  Q  aller  Religion,"  or  any  definitions  which 
give  predominance  to  any  particular  faculty  find  a  regulative  in 

1Hume,  "  Essays,"  Vol.  II,  p.  1.     Greene  and  Grose. 
2  Hume,  "  The  Natural  History  of  Keligion,"  p.  362. 
3 Schleiermacher,  "Der  christliche  Glaubenslehre,"  p.  3. 
4  Hartmann,  "  Beligions-philosophie, "  vol.  2,  p.  55. 


28  THE    IDEA    OF    GOD. 

our  theory  which  gives  to  each  faculty  its  place  and  prominence 
in  a  religious  life. 

II. 

EELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE. 

Introspection.  —  When  Kant  said l  of  the  Ontological  Proof  : 
"  It  leaves  all  experience  out  of  account  and  concludes  entirely  a 
priori  from  mere  concepts,  the  existence  of  a  supreme  cause," 
he  certainly  was  not  wide  enough  in  his  generalization.  If 
sensuous  experience  is  intended,  the  truth  of  the  assertion  might 
be  admitted ;  but  experience  is  as  broad  and  possibly  broader 
than  consciousness  and  in  this  sense  the  Anselmic  form  of  the 
proof  is  rather  an  appeal  to  experience.  By  its  very  nature  it 
withdraws  attention  from  the  world  and  directs  it  inward.  It  is  a 
conscious  appeal  to  the  soul  for  a  knowledge  of  God.  In  other 
words  the  Ontological  Proof  necessitated  the  development  of  Psy- 
chology. Here  again  Anselm  received  the  mantle  of  Augustine. 
In  a  pure  spirit  of  literalism  Augustine  sought  to  vindicate  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  by  careful  introspection.  If  God  had  said 
"  Let  us  make  man  in  our  own  image."  And  "  in  the  image  of 
God  created  He  him,"  then  it  is  reasonable  to  search  in  man  for 
the  image  of  God.  Such  was  the  reasoning  that  led  Augustine  to 
give  to  the  world  his  De  Trinitate.  Without  estimating  the  success 
of  this  work,  so  far  as  its  object  is  concerned,  we  are  much  inter- 
ested in  the  worth  of  its  method.  It  made  inner  experience  the 
foundation  of  metaphysics.  And  Anselm  was  simply  returning 
to  this  method  when  he  sought  in  himself2  "  for  a  single  argu- 
ment which  would  suffice  to  prove  that  there  is  indeed  a  God." 

In  our  analysis  of  consciousness  we  saw  that  emotions  are  in- 
separably linked  with  ideas.  Without  the  idea  of  God  religious 
emotions  could  not  come  into  existence.  "  Kine  Religion  ohne 
Gottesforstellung  die  Gottesforstellung  ist  der  bewusste  Ausgang- 
spankt  aller  religiosen  Funktion"  is  von  Hartmann's 3  statement 

'Kant,  "Critique  of  Pure  Reason,"  p.  476. 

2  Anselm,  u  Proslogion, "  Int. 

3Hartmann,  "  Beligions-philosophie,"  Vol.  II,  p.  6. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    RELIGION.  29 

of  this  truth.  Now  Religion  itself  is  a  fact.  It  is  with  us  as 
certainly  as  any  of  the  facts  of  conscious  life.  The  religious 
emotions  also  are  well  determined  elements  of  experience.  We 
know  them  precisely  as  we  know  other  forms  of  conscious  ex- 
perience. Therefore  the  idea  of  God  does  not  stand  in  isolation 
—  a  product  of  the  rational  faculty  —  but  is  inseparably  yoked  to 
conscious  experience.  We  learned  further  in  our  study  of  ideas 
that  they  are  vitalized  by  a  purpose.  An  idea  without  an  inten- 
tion does  not  arise.  We  must  now  appeal  to  experience  to  show 
that  it  is  the  intention,  the  meaning  of  the  idea  of  God  to  mediate 
between  religious  experience  and  the  existing  Other  of  that  ex- 
perience. Our  method  would  have  been  more  logical  if  we  had 
taken  up  the  religious  experiences  first  and,  after  examining  them 
in  the  light  of  Psychology,  then  had  proceeded  to  our  inquiry 
concerning  the  relation  of  the  concept  to  being.  But  that  method 
would  not  have  been  so  natural,  since  experience  always  pro- 
ceeds from  the  objective  to  the  subjective.  We  attend  to  the 
object  with  interest  long  before  the  psychical  functions  come  to 
our  notice.  And  in  a  like  manner  a  study  of  the  development  of 
Religion  verifies  the  statement  that  the  idea  of  God  precedes  the 
idea  of  self  in  consciousness. 

Consciousness.  —  Some  of  the  steps  in  the  development  of  Psy- 
chology in  relation  to  Religion  were  noted  in  the  last  chapter. 
Our  interest  is  centered  in  the  connection  of  the  Ontological  Proof 
with  this  development.  The  nature  of  this  proof  requires  intro- 
spection and  while  the  attention  of  the  mind  is  turned  inward  it 
finds  ideas,  such  as  the  concept  of  a  perfect  being,  but  if  such  ab- 
straction is  continued  long  enough  it  must  perceive  in  addition  to 
the  ideas  of  the  mind  the  fact  of  consciousness.  This  we  are  led 
to  believe  was  what  took  place  in  the  mind  of  Descartes.  He 
was  looking  for  a  starting  point  which  doubt  could  not  remove  — 
a  truth  which  would  act  or  abide  as  his  fulcrum  that  he  might 
move  the  world  of  thought.  He  found  this  truth  in  the  intuitive 
knowledge  of  self —  in  consciousness.  By  this  discovery  of  con- 
sciousness as  the  primary  fact  of  knowledge  he  gave  a  valuable 
truth  to  the  world  and  a  great  impluse  to  both  Psychology  and 


30  THE    IDEA   OF   GOD. 

Religion.  Henceforth  experience  of  whatever  nature  requires  a 
scientific  treatment.  Sensuous  experience  at  first,  very  reason- 
ably, claimed  attention.  In  the  hands  of  the  Empiricists  it  for  a 
time  appeared  that  this  was  the  only  experience  worthy  of  atten- 
tion but  consciousness  is  broader  than  sensation  and  it  was  impossi- 
ble that  other  forms  of  experience  should  not  sooner  or  later  take 
their  place  along  with  the  other  facts  of  life. 

Without  specifying  the  source  to  which  Religious  emotions  are 
to  be  traced  they  must  be  recognized  as  facts.  They  form  a  part 
of  the  sum  total  of  Reality.  They  are  forces  which  have  to  be 
reckoned  with,  they  can  be  dealt  with  and  measured.  In  speak- 
ing of  religious  emotions  in  this  way  we  are  classifying  them  along 
with  the  real  as  opposed  to  the  conceptual  phenomena  of  the  uni- 
verse. As  having  ideas  inseparably  connected  with  them  they 
belong  to  rational  quantities  but  as  moving  active  forces  they  be- 
long to  the  world  of  facts.  The  realm  of  religious  experience  is 
now  open  before  us. 

Primary  Facts  of  Consciousness.  —  There  are  two  facts  dis- 
covered by  consciousness  which  resist  further  analysis.  The  first 
is  existence  and  the  second  is  finiteness  and  limitation.  Affirma- 
tion and  negation,  I  am,  and  I  am  limited,  are  the  primary  analyt- 
ical judgments  of  consciousness.  These  two  facts  of  experience 
are  the  coordinates  of  all  possible  experience.  In  so  far  as  I  ex- 
ist under  these  conditions  experience  is  necessary  for  me.  On  the 
other  hand  experience  is  impossible  for  nonexisting  or  an  unlim- 
ited being.  Thus  it  appears  that  a  limited  consciousness  occupies 
some  intermediate  place  between  nonexistence  and  perfect  being. 
Again  consciousness  reveals  that  the  limitations  of  human  nature 
are  temporal  and  spatial  in  form.  All  human  experience  is  sub- 
ject to  these  limitations.  In  content  the  limitation  may  be  sensu- 
ous or  nonsensuous,  pathetic  or  antipathetic;  they  may  either 
help  or  hinder  the  conscious  individual.  This  constitutes  the  re- 
lation of  an  individual  personality  to  all  that  is  without  or  beyond 
him. 

The  distinction  between  the  rational  and  material  parts  of  a 
self  is  also  a  very  early  work  of  self-consciousness.  The  mind  by 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF   RELIGION.  31 

means  of  its  ideas  transcends  the  limitations  of  the  body.  The 
ideas  of  the  mind  very  definitely  ally  themselves  with  the  non- 
sensuous  limitations  and  seek  to  penetrate  and  master  those  which 
are  sensuous.  It  is  in  this  struggle  for  the  mastery  that  Religion 
appears.  To  involve  ourselves  in  the  hopeless  task  of  giving  a 
terse  definition  of  Religion  is  altogether  outside  of  our  purpose  but 
it  is  within  our  topic  to  indicate  that  Religion  in  its  psychological 
analysis  is  neither  knowledge  nor  feeling  nor  will  alone  but  that 
it  subsidizes  all  these  faculties  in  religious  functions.  It  does  not 
matter  whether  we  accept  this  tripartate  division  of  the  faculties 
of  the  mind  or  follow  some  other  division,  it  is  the  psychical  con- 
sciousness which  puts  the  mind  in  reciprocity  with  the  world  of 
sense  and  the  religious  consciousness  discovers  those  facts  and  ob- 
jects with  which  Religion  is  concerned  and  relates  the  entire  mind 
to  them.  The  world  is  an  object  which  experience  accepts  and 
identifies  and  reacts  upon ;  but,  it  has  no  finality  in  which  a  reli- 
gious consciousness  can  rest,  for  it  is  also  subject  to  limitations. 
And  a  limited  self,  conscious  of  its  own  incompleteness,  must  seek 
beyond  the  world  for  the  satisfaction  of  that  lack  which  it  knows 
in  experience. 

Primary  Religious  Emotion.  —  Here  then  one  of  the  primary 
religious  emotions  is  discovered ;  one  that  makes  its  appearance 
in  primitive  or  undeveloped  stages  of  religious  life  and  is  most 
prominent  in  the  most  highly  developed  religions.  It  is  not  fear 
and  it  is  not  faith.  It  is  an  emotion  which  arises  from  a  limited 
consciousness  possessed  of  ideas  which  transcend  its  limitations. 
It  is  that  attitude  of  longing  which  precedes  expressions  of  faith 
and  worship  —  a  reaching  out  for  help,  a  quest  for  a  helper  in  the 
struggle  of  life.  Such  an  emotion  must  be  traced  back  from  its 
expression  in  the  examination  of  low  stages  of  Religion.  In  more 
cultured  minds  it  gives  utterance  to  the  yearning  cry :  "  As  the 
hart  panteth  after  the  waterbrooks,  so  panteth  my  soul  after  Thee, 
O  God."  It  was  to  this  emotion  that  Augustine  gave  a  definite 
form  when  he  said  :  "  O  Lord,  Thou  hast  made  us  for  Thyself, 
and  our  heart  is  restless,  until  it  find  rest  in  Thee."  l  The  sacred 

1  Augustine,  "Confessions,"  p.  1. 


32  THE   IDEA   OF   GOD. 

books  of  all  religions  are  full  of  more  or  less  definite  cries  of  this 
kind.  It  is  the  conscious  effort  of  an  individual  and  limited  self 
to  escape  the  orphanhood  of  individuality,  the  restlessness  produced 
by  the  consciousness  or  even  the  pain  of  limitations  and  the  pur- 
pose of  ideas  to  find  their  Other  beyond  these  limitations.  In  this 
sense  Religion  must  be  as  broad  as  humanity  and  all  Religion  is 
essentially,  even  if  very  indefinitely,  monotheistic.  Man  is  a 
religion-making  being  because  he  is  a  limited  individuality  and 
the  limits  which  seem  to  hinder  him  become  the  stairway  on  which 
he  ascends  to  communion  and  union  with  the  unlimited.  In  other 
words  where  limits  and  ideas  transcending  those  limits  are  com- 
bined in  one  being  a  Religion  becomes  a  necessity.  The  limited 
one  finding  in  himself  ideas  which  go  beyond^ himself  is  in  so  far 
related  to  the  Object  which  the  ideas  represent.  The"  longing  is 
for  the  confirmation  of  this  relation.  Thus  the  emotion  which  is 
still  physical  and  expresses  itself  physically  and  the  idea  which  is 
purely  psychical  and  belongs  to  the  nonmaterial  representations 
of  consciousness,  almost  coalesce,  for  the  purpose  of  both  the  emo- 
tion and  the  idea  is  in  the  helpful  relation  of  the  Other  of  the  idea 
to  the  need  of  the  self. 

This  emotion  as  it  develops  may  take  the  form  of  fear  or  faith 
according  to  the  predominance  of  the  limitations  or  the  idea  in 
attention.  It  may  selfishly  concern  itself  with  its  own  welfare  or 
generously  take  thought  for  the  unlimited  to  which  it  belongs.  It 
may  be  submissive  or  defiant  according  to  the  temperament  of  the 
individual ;  but  whichever  of  these  characteristics  may  belong  to 
it,  the  root  of  such  a  religious  experience  so  far  as  psychology  is 
concerned  is  to  be  found  in  the  limitation  of  the  individual  human 
life. 

We  need  not  suppose  that  the  Ontological  Idea  which  our  theory 
links  with  this  primary  religious  emotion  is  necessarily  definite  or 
its  concept  completely  analyzed.  It  is  the  very  essence  of  our 
contention  that  an  historical  experience  is  necessary  to  give  this 
idea  a  content  and  that  nothing  less  than  a  perfect  experience  will 
complete  its  analysis.  Nevertheless,  the  religious  process  of  know- 
ing is  not  different  from  other  processes  of  knowing.  The  simple 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    RELIGION.  33 

sensation  does  not  come  into  consciousness  unless  it  is  joined  with 
a  percept.  The  percept  does  not  stand  alone  but  determines  a 
concept  and  experience  never  completely  fills  the  concept.  Neither 
does  religious  experience  ever  fully  satisfy  the  Ontological  concept. 
There  is,  however,  a  content  which  may  be  derived  from  the  mind 
in  itself  or  may  as  well  be  derived  from  Reality  itself.  Either 
way  its  origin  is  equally  mysterious.  I  refer  to  the  beyond  —  all 
that  a  limited  consciousness  recognizes  as  beyond  its  limitations. 
Professor  Max  Miiller  calls l  it  "  the  perception  of  the  infinite." 
He  finds  it  in  space  and  time  and  causality  or  what  Kant  calls  the 
forms  of  thought.  According  to  both,  these  forms  are  psychical. 
They  are  a  priori  so  far  as  experience  is  concerned.  With  this 
admission  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  former  can  sustain  his  prin- 
ciple, "  Nihil  est  in  fide  quod  non  antea  fuerit  in  sensu."  But 
that  is  aside  from  our  argument,  it  is  the  historic  data  with  which 
he  illustrates  his  thesis  that  interests  us.  The  dawn,  the  nightly 
sky,  clouds,  trees  and  rivers  not  only  might  furnish  "  Theogonic 
Elements/7  2  but  they  have  furnished  these  elements  as  his  exami- 
nation of  many  sacred  books  distinctly  shows.  These  matters  of 
fact  in  nature  were  each  embraced  by  the  infinite  and  being  per- 
ceived as  facts  of  experience  carried  the  mind  onward  in  its  con- 
ception of  the  infinite.  Thus  we  find  the  vague  indefinite  idea, 
perception  of  the  infinite  if  you  choose  to  call  it  so,  but  I  prefer  to 
reserve  that  term  for  the  faculty  by  which  we  apprehend  all  that 
is  not  infinite,  and  the  emotion  made  more  intense  by  the  very 
indefiniteness  of  the  Object  which  arouses  it. 

Shamanism  and  Divination.  —  Along  with  this  primary  emotion 
there  are  certain  practices  of  primitive  religions  which  tenaciously 
survive  even  in  cultured  societies,  such  as  Shamanism  and  Divi- 
nation, which  may  well  be  noticed  in  this  place.  The  two  prac- 
tices along  with  their  functionaries  are  not  peculiar  or  surprising 
in  the  light  of  what  we  have  just  said.  They  reflect  the  two 
greatest  limitations  of  humanity  —  a  lack  of  power  and  a  lack  of 
foresight.  The  arts  of  the  Shaman  are  used  to  constrain  the  un- 

1  Miiller,  "The  Gifford  Lectures,  1888,  Natural  Keligion,"  p.  188. 
2Muller,  "The  Gifford  Lectures,  1888,  Natural  Keligion,"  p.  148. 


34  THE   IDEA    OF   GOD. 

seen  powers  to  lend  their  aid  to  man.  To  make  rain,  to  drive 
out  inimical  spirits  or  to  give  victory,  will  in  so  far,  put  the  one 
aided  beyond  his  limitations.  Such  contributions  of  aid  are  ever 
desirable.  The  methods  by  which  it  is  thought  that  such  aid 
can  be  constrained  no  doubt  reflect  crude  anthropomorphisms ; 
but  with  that  we  are  not  concerned.  And  again,  the  uncertainty 
of  the  future  is  a  time  limitation  which  ever  presses  heavily  on 
the  understanding  of  humanity  and  those  who  feel  these  limita- 
tions seek  to  obtain  from  those  who  are  not  thus  limited  the 
secrets  of  the  future,  hence  Divination. 

Idols. — But  the  question  arises  in  connection  with  the  inter- 
pretation of  Fetichism  —  if  we  accept  that  as  a  primitive  form  of 
Religion  —  Why  do  people  in  that  stage  of  culture  seek  a  multi- 
tude of  gods  and  make  use  of  objects  of  an  inferior  order  if  they 
possess  anything  of  the  nature  of  an  Ontological  Idea  ?  Or  how 
is  it  possible  to  say  that  all  Religion  is  in  a  sense  monotheistic 
when  polytheism  is  in  such  cases  so  apparent?  One  might  with 
as  much  reason  ask  why  the  savage  hunts  in  certain  fields  and 
fishes  in  neighboring  streams  of  a  bounded  territory.  His  limi- 
tations make  it  necessary.  It  is  a  temporary  makeshift.  He 
seeks  help  first  from  that  which  is  nearest  at  hand.  If  "  he  sac- 
rificeth  unto  his  net  and  burneth  incense  unto  his  drag "  l  and 
makes  a  god  of  the  charred  end  of  that  which  has  made  him 
warm,  he  is  at  least  acknowledging  that  the  drag  and  the  wood 
have  played  a  godlike  part  in  extending  the  bounds  of  his  limi- 
tations. But  the  very  fact  that  the  Animist  multiplies  the  objects 
of  his  devotion  and  idealizes  his  fetish  indefinitely  until  multi- 
plicity gives  place  to  unity,  as  in  the  Pantheism  of  Hinduism, 
renders  it  evident,  that  no  limited  object  satisfies  that  primary 
emotion  of  longing  with  its  idea,  which  is  at  the  root  of  all  reli- 
gious experience.  Without  its  idea  this  emotion  cannot  appear  in 
experience  and  however  vague  or  illusory  it  may  be  consciousness 
bears  witness  to  the  fact  of  its  presence.  It  is  possible  and  the 
history  of  Religion  shows  that  it  is  a  fact  that  in  the  undeveloped 
condition  of  the  human  understanding  at  various  stages  of  its 

1  Habakkuk  1  :  16. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   RELIGION.  35 

culture  this  longing  and  its  idea  attach  themselves  to  this  and  that 
object,  temporarily  seeking  satisfaction,  but  in  no  case  is  there 
evidence  that  in  such  conditions  the  mind  finds  rest. 

From  these  considerations  we  may  conclude  that  an  Animistic 
theory  of  the  origin  of  Religion  instead  of  confuting  rather  confirms 
the  presuppositions  of  the  Ontological  Proof.  Let  it  once  be 
understood  that  the  Ontological  Idea  is  not  definite  and  analyzed 
in  every  human  mind  but  that  it  is  an  idea  with  an  infinite  capa- 
city for  analysis  and  the  difficulty  in  accepting  it  is  removed.  The 
one  element  of  the  idea,  however,  which  is  primary,  is  that  it  in- 
volves existence  objective  to  the  thinker,  otherwise  Religion  and 
being  itself  and  even  consciousness  might  be  denied. 

There  are  two  fields  to  which  the  Ontological  Idea  may  turn  in 
its  quest  for  its  Other  or  object.  One  is  ike  material  world  with 
its  manifold  forces  and  the  other  is  the  mind  with  its  complex 
of  phenomena.  The  combination  of  these  two  spheres  is  also  pos- 
sible in  religious  thought.  We  have  already  seen  how  the  nature 
worshiper  as  a  temporary  makeshift  does  obeisance  to  an  inferior 
object.  What  object  will  become  prominent  in  his  pantheon  is 
simply  a  matter  of  attention  and  a  great  step  forward  is  taken  when 
some  superior  man  is  fixed  upon  as  the  object  of  devotion  and 
adoration.  From  henceforth  the  anthropomorphization  of  other 
objects  of  nature  is  an  easy  process,  for  the  idea  refusing  to  be 
satisfied  with  either  the  fetish  or  the  hero  as  a  final  object  of  wor- 
ship, must  continue  the  search  further. 

The  Gods.  —  In  the  choice  of  objects  of  worship  the  great  facts 
and  objects  soon  claimed  attention.  The  myths  concerning  the 
sun  god,  the  rain  god,  etc.,  can  be  traced  back  to  the  Akkadians. 
These  larger  objects  of  nature  had  entered  into  their  pantheon 
long  before  the  dawn  of  history.  *  These  myths  represent  an  in- 
teresting stage  in  the  progress  of  a  search  for  the  Object  of  Religion 
in  the  external  objects  of  nature.  They  show  the  constant  reac- 
tion between  the  mind's  conception  of  the  infinite  and  its  percep- 
tion of  the  finite.  These  two  mental  processes  were  constantly  at 
work  harmonizing  the  facts  of  limited  experience  with  the  concep- 

1  Tiele,  ' '  History  of  Keligion. ' ' 


36  THE   IDEA    OF   GOD. 

tion  of  what  is  beyond  experience.  At  this  point  of  religious 
culture  two  steps  were  possible  and  were  actually  taken.  One 
was  the  deification  of  all  objects,  or  Pantheism ;  and,  the  other  dis- 
pensed with  the  temporal  limitations  of  thought  and  postulated 
immortality.  This  development  could  hardly  be  escaped  where 
material  objects  were  deified.  The  perish ableness  of  objects  and 
the  conflicts  of  the  forces  of  nature  which  gave  material  for  the 
myths  also  indicated  that  these  objects  had  temporal  as  well  as 
material  limitations.  The  death  of  the  gods  was  always  a  possi- 
bility. But  the  mind  having  fixed  upon  the  sky,  the  sun,  the 
rain,  etc.,  as  objects  of  worship  and  at  the  same  time  perceiving 
their  limitations,  did  not  need  to  take  a  great  leap  when  it  com- 
bined all  things  into  a  Brahma.  Its  creed  then  becomes  :  "  All 
this  universe  indeed  in  Brahma :  from  him  it  does  proceed ;  into 
him  it  dissolves  ;  in  him  it  breathes."  l  To  such  a  god  immortal- 
ity may  easily  be  ascribed. 

We  must  remember,  however,  that  Pantheism  is  a  philosophy 
rather  than  a  Religion.  Brahma  was  never  worshiped  in  the  all- 
absorbing  way  that  Yahweh  or  Allah  appeal  to  their  worshipers. 
Neither  has  the  intellectual  love  of  a  pantheistic  deity  which 
Spinoza  suggested  as  the  highest  Religion  appealed  to  humanity. 
All  that  the  mind  has  been  able  to  make  of  Pan  is  a  great  fetish 
which  involves  an  appalling  fatalism. 

Roman  Religion. — The  history  of  the  Religion  of  Rome  presents 
a  striking  example  of  the  transition,  which  the  Ontological  Idea 
makes  in  its  search  for  its  Other,  from  the  physical  to  the  psy- 
chical field.  The  old  gods,  the  objective  gods,  were  still  rever- 
enced but  MenSj  Virtus,  Pudidtia,  Fides,  and  other  internal 
faculties  and  graces  were  introduced  into  their  pantheon.  Temples 
were  erected  to  these  deities  and  they  were  adored  along  with 
the  other  gods.  Max  Miiller  represents2  that  Regulus  would 
rather  die  than  dishonor  Fides.  And  no  doubt  a  similar  religious 
motive  prompted  Yirginius  to  sacrifice  his  daughter  rather  than 
allow  her  allegiance  to  Pudicitia  to  be  broken.  Other  examples 

1  Quoted  by  Dr.  Ellinwood  in  "  Notes  on  Comparative  Religions." 
2 Miiller,  "The  Gifford  Lectures,  1888,  Natural  Religion,"  p.  176. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   RELIGION.  37 

might  be  cited  but  these  are  sufficient  to  indicate  that  the  internal 
field  is  the  ethical  field  of  search  for  an  object  of  religious  worship. 

It  will  be  better,  however,  to  pursue  our  psychological  in- 
quiries a  little  further  before  taking  up  this  topic. 

Some  of  the  higher  forms  of  religious  experience  demand  our 
attention  in  this  connection.  They  do  not  differ  in  their  final 
analysis  from  what  we  have  already  observed.  The  same  con- 
sciousness of  limitation  and  the  same  idealism  is  present  accom- 
panied with  a  greater  complexity  and  definiteness.1  Such  phe- 
nomena as  Metanoia,  Enthusiasm  and  Mysticism  here  claim  our 
attention.  These  are  experiences  which  are  recognized  as  facts 
and  forces  in  the  world  as  well  as  in  the  lives  of  individuals. 
They  have  become  constructive  principles  in  determining  the  lives 
of  men  whom  the  world  chooses  to  honor  and  as  forces  they  have 
had  a  visible  part  in  making  history.  In  the  conclusion  of  his 
Gifford  Lectures,  Professor  James  says  : 2  "  Religion  includes  .  .  . 
a  new  zest  which  adds  itself  like  a  gift  to  life,  and  takes  the 
form  either  of  lyrical  enchantment  or  of  appeal  to  earnestness  and 
heroism.  Also  an  assurance  of  safety  and  a  temper  of  peace  and, 
in  relation  to  others,  a  preponderance  of  loving  affection." 

Metanoia.  —  One  of  these  experiences  is  named  in  the  Gospels 
Metanoia?  This  significant  word  occurs  so  frequently  in  these 
sacred  books  that  we  may  well  believe  that  it  indicates  a  charac- 
teristic experience.  It  also  points  out  the  mind  as  the  part  of  the 
individual  in  which  the  experience  takes  place.  The  well-known 
meaning  of  metanoia  is  a  change  of  mind  with  a  corresponding 
change  of  character.  In  such  an  experience  a  moral  element  is 
involved.  The  limitations  of  a  sensuous  kind  which  require  the 
help  of  a  God  of  power  have  given  place  to  limitations  of  a 

1  Professor  James  in  his  Gifford  Lectures  on  "The  Varieties  of  Religious 
Experience"  and  Professor  Starbuck  in  his  work  on  the  "Psychology  of  Re- 
ligion," have  made  valuable  collections  of  testimonies  bearing  on  this  topic  and 
have  subjected  them  to  a  psychological  treatment,  but  we  can  only  hope  to  make 
use  of  their  conclusions  in  so  far  as  they  bear  upon  our  subject. 

2  James,  "Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  485. 

3 1  have  used  the  Greek  word  metanoia  instead  of  its  English  equivalent 
repentance  because  the  latter  has  a  double  significance. 


38  THE   IDEA    OF   GOD. 

spiritual  nature  which  require  the  help  of  a  God  of  holiness. 
But  in  the  case  of  this  higher  experience  just  the  same  as  in  the 
case  of  the  lower  experience  the  idea  anticipates  the  experience 
and  prepares  the  way  for  it. 

I  can  quite  understand  the  psychologist's  description  of  the 
brain's  function  in  this  process.  That  such  a  change  of  mind  as 
is  indicated  by  the  term  metanoia  and  is  commonly  known  as 
Conversion,  should  be  accompanied  and  accomplished  by  a  trans- 
ference of  the  habitual  center  of  personal  energy ;  that  religious 
ideas,  previously  peripheral  in  consciousness,  take  a  central  place, 
and  religious  aims  form  the  habitual  center  of  energy  is  quite 
intelligible.  All  this,  however,  is  simply  descriptive.  It  tells 
what  takes  place  without  the  how  and  why.  Psychology,  there- 
fore, simply  adds  its  testimony.  Something  does  take  place.  How 
peripheral  religious  centers  come  to  exist  and  why  their  content 
when  once  illuminated  lends  a  new  zest  to  character,  which  com- 
mon sense  chooses  to  esteem  valuable,  has  not  been  made  known. 
Neither  is  the  cause  of  the  transference  discoverable  among  the 
mind's  peculiar  forces.  It  is  not  within  the  sphere  of  psychology 
to  furnish  an  escape  from  idealism  any  more  than  it  is  within  its 
sphere  to  solve  the  problem  of  consciousness  itself.  And  in  the 
problem  furnished  by  religious  metanoia  we  are  again  thrown 
back  upon  the  law  of  the  inseparable  unity  of  experience  and  ideas. 
The  God-idea  has  only  taken  a  more  definite  form.  Its  moral 
character  unfolding  itself  over  against  the  moral  limits  which  the 
individual's  growing  consciousness  discovers. 

Let  us  see  if  such  an  explanation  is  consistent  with  our  theory 
of  the  Ontological  Proof.  The  psychologist  has  told  us  of  the 
transference  of  centers  of  consciousness.  The  idea  of  a  most  per- 
fect being  has  occupied  an  inferior  place  in  consciousness.  Other 
orders  of  being  and  other  purposes  toward  them  have  occupied 
the  center  of  illumination,  but  the  mind's  readiness  to  occupy 
itself  with  that  which  is  more  perfect  is  a  clue  to  the  fact  that  its 
quest  is  the  most  Perfect.  In  the  experience  known  as  Metanoia 
the  idea  of  God  in  the  Christian's  sense  has  received  a  greater 
illumination  and  the  one  who  experiences  the  metanoia  oppressed 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF    RELIGION.  39 

by  his  limitations  is  conscious  of  a  transference  of  thought  and 
affection  from  some  inferior  means  of  attaining  his  end  to  the 
superior  means  even  to  a  fellowship  and  union  with  the  unlimited 
Father.  The  consciousness  of  renewed  strength  accompanying 
this  change  becomes  to  the  receiver  an  infallible  sign  of  the  reality 
of  the  Being  to  whom  his  idea  led  him.  The  purpose  of  the  idea 
and  the  experience  coincide.  Such  an  one  can  truly  say  "  Hoc  es 
Tu  Domine  Deus  noster."  The  relation  is  no  longer  looked  upon 
as  the  relation  between  an  idea  and  its  other.  The  purpose  of  the 
idea  is  fulfilled.  The  relation  is  a  fact  —  a  living  experience.  In 
such  a  stage  of  religious  culture  the  immediacy  of  Religion  is  found 
not  only  in  the  emotions  of  the  worshiper  but  also  in  his  relation 
to  the  Object  of  his  adoration. 

This  brings  us  to  the  threshold  of  mysticism.  We  are  ar- 
rested, however,  by  the  very  nature  of  worship.  Mysticism  seeks 
to  transcend  worship  by  ignoring  its  two-fold  nature.  It  aban- 
dons the  progressive  method  of  unfolding  the  idea  of  God  to 
which  our  Ontological  Proof  admonishes  us  to  adhere  and  seeks 
by  intuition  to  grasp  reality  in  its  totality.  Before  speaking  of 
this  matter  more  fully  let  us  attend  to  worship  as  a  religious 
discipline. 

Worship.  —  This  discussion  is  appropriate  in  this  place  because 
worship  expresses  the  two-fold  character  of  the  highest  religious 
experience.  It  manifests  both  sides  of  the  consciousness  of  a 
soul  which  has  entered  into  fellowship  with  the  Divine  and  yet 
continues  in  a  body  of  flesh.  It  has  due  regard  for  the  "  perse- 
verance of  the  saints  "  and  the  irresistible  grace  of  God.  "  It  is 
a  mysterious  thing,"  says  Jonathan  Edwards,1  "and  what  has 
puzzled  and  amazed  many  a  good  Christian,  that  there  should  be 
that  which  is  so  divine  and  precious,  as  the  saving  grace  of  God, 
and  the  new  and  divine  nature,  dwelling  in  the  same  heart,  with 
so  much  corruption,  hypocrisy  and  iniquity,  in  a  particular  saint." 
And  Paul  who  has  set  forth  the  doctrine  of  union  with  God  in 
Christ  in  the  greatest  fulness,  said 2  "  We  have  this  treasure  in 

1  Edwards,  "Works,"  Vol.  4,  p.  4. 

2  2  Cor.  4  :  7. 


40  THE    IDEA    OF    GOD. 

earthen  vessels."  Worship  consciously  expresses  both  these  facts. 
It  combines  humility  with  exaltation.  The  worshiper  is  in  fel- 
lowship with  the  more  perfect  or  most  perfect  being  and  to  that 
extent  he  has  passed  beyond  his  finiteness.  Yet  as  an  individual 
he  is  still  finite  and  conscious  of  his  limitations.  As  a  Polytheist 
man  sacrifices  to  his  drag  because  the  drag  had  extended  his  power 
of  sustaining  life,  so  as  a  Christian  he  says 2  in  pious  devotion,  "  I 
can  do  all  things  in  Him  that  strengtheneth  me,"  an  assumption 
that  fellowship  with  his  God  transcends  all  finite  limitations. 

Worship  does  not  appear  in  this  treatment  as  a  primary  reli- 
gious function.  It  is  rather  an  attitude  after  the  fact  —  a  product 
of  Religion.  Nevertheless  worship  is  a  valuable  activity  and 
stands  on  the  border  line  between  religious  and  social  functions. 
One  cannot  fail  to  be  impressed  with  the  similarity  of  the  con- 
duct of  courtiers,  to  that  of  worshipers.  In  fact  the  differenti- 
ation of  rulers  from  deities  is  a  late  and  to  some  extent  an  im- 
possible proceeding.  Even  in  the  highest  religions  the  duties  to 
rulers  are  enfolded  in  the  duties  to  God.  The  man  who  has  rev- 
erence for  whatever  helps  him  over  an  obstacle  could  not  in  reason 
overlook  the  duty  he  owes  to  his  chieftain  or  ruler.  But  this  is 
going  outside  of  our  sphere  which  is  distinctly  religious,  it  is 
more  to  the  point  to  notice  that  worship  and  the  spirit  of  worship 
as  we  find  them  in  a  religious  life  are  altogether  in  harmony  with 
our  representation  of  the  Ontological  Proof.  On  the  one  hand 
they  are  rooted  in  experience  and  recognize  the  bounds  of  every- 
day life  ;  on  the  other  hand  they  are  ideal,  reaching  out  with  fear 
and  faith  to  a  more  perfect  if  not  the  most  perfect  Being.  Here 
we  certainly  have  matter  of  fact.  There  is  a  great  difference  in 
range  between  the  worship  of  a  St.  Francis  or  a  Tolstoy  and  the 
worship  of  a  peasant  at  a  wayside  shrine  or  the  cringing  of  an 
animist  before  his  fetish  but  in  all  that  vast  difference  there  is  no 
by-way  of  escape  from  this  two-fold  nature  of  worship.  The  ex- 
perience and  the  idea  live  and  die  together. 

Saintliness.  — It  has  been  our  effort  up  to  this  point  to  show 
that  the  a  priori  proof  of  the  existence  of  an  Object  of  Religion  is 

2Philippians4:  13. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    EELIGION.  41 

in  harmony  with  psychology  and  anthropology.  These  two 
sciences  have  been  greatly  developed  in  recent  years  and  the  facts 
which  they  have  discovered  must  be  accepted  and  affiliated  in  any 
theory  of  life.  So  far  we  have  found  no  cause  to  abandon  our 
theory  on  their  account.  There  remains  to  be  examined  under 
the  present  topic  what  could  be  termed  the  development  of  saintli- 
ness.  In  its  more  exact  significance  saintliness  means  a  life 
separated  from  the  world  and  consecrated  to  the  pursuit  of  godli- 
ness. It  is  my  intention  to  use  the  word  in  the  broader  evangeli- 
cal sense  of  "  growth  in  grace  "  —  life  in  contact  with  the  world 
and  in  communion  with  God.  In  this  sense  the  knight  as  well 
as  the  hermit  is  a  religious  person  and  the  unwarranted  distinction 
between  the  sacred  and  the  secular  life  is  broken  down.  This  is 
the  form  that  Christianity,  especially  Protestant  Christianity,  has 
taken  at  the  present  day.  Religion  is  cultivated  in  and  in  har- 
mony with  a  life  of  affairs.  Union  and  communion  with  God  are 
accepted  in  the  subjugation  of  a  material  world.  Such  a  view  of 
life  is  optimistic.  Instead  of  looking  upon  the  material  world 
as  antipathetic  and  subversive  to  piety  it  accepts  all  things, 
as  servants  to  the  soul,  though  they  may  be  at  times  insubordinate. 
With  such  a  view  of  life,  development  is  almost  a  postulate. 
The  conception  of  a  metanoia  which  brings  the  soul  into  union 
with  the  Object  of  Religion  in  no  wise  dispenses  with  the  process 
of  development.  The  current  theory  of  religious  experience 
follows  the  analogy  furnished  by  Biology  in  supposing  that 
each  religious  life  passes  through  the  stages  represented  in  the 
historic  development  of  Religion.  This  analogy  is  no  doubt  over- 
worked but  at  the  same  time  the  development  of  saintliness  is  a 
well  authenticated  process. 

Our  treatment  of  this  form  of  religious  experience  falls  in  line 
with  our  treatment  of  worship  and  our  entire  theory.  The  idea 
of  God  stands  over  against  an  ever  unfolding  life  but  the  un- 
folding of  the  religious  life  is  always  toward  the  God-idea  which 
has  anticipated  it.  Thus  an  ever-increasing  knowledge  of  the 
content  of  the  God-idea  serves  to  make  conscious  of  the  manifold 
limitations  of  finite  individuality  and  "  growth  in  grace "  is  the 


42  THE   IDEA    OF    GOD. 

process  of  making  real  the  transcendence  of  limitations  which 
faith  has  apprehended  in  the  ideal. 

Crises.  —  A  lack  of  knowledge  concerning  the  psychology  of 
religious  experience  has  been  a  fruitful  source  of  controversy  on 
this  point.  What  are  known  as  crises  in  experience  are  more  ob- 
vious and  striking  than  the  regular  every  day  experiences  of  life. 
I  refer  to  sudden  conversions  and  deluges  of  enthusiasm.  Like 
all  extraordinary  events  such  facts  rivet  attention.  Those  who 
build  upon  such  experiences  fail  to  recognize  the  cumulative  proc- 
esses of  the  mind  which  are  well  known  to  the  psychologist. 
Comforting  as  these  extraordinary  processes  are,  to  the  person 
who  has  realized  them,  and  useful  as  they  have  been  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  religious  life,  we  are  compelled  to  look  upon  them  as 
abnormal  and  to  classify  them  with  other  well-known  natural 
events  of  an  unwholesome  character.  The  healthy,  religious 
mind  finds  that  it  does  well  not  to  expect  a  sudden  flood  of  knowl- 
edge or  of  character  stuff  but  to  grow  in  grace  and  increase  in  the 
knowledge  of  the  Lord.  In  such  a  growth  experience  and  faith 
are  the  coordinates  of  knowledge. 

We  have  now  examined  some  characteristic  religious  experi- 
ences. They  are  in  no  way  out  of  harmony  with  what  our  inter- 
pretation of  the  Ontological  Proof  would  lead  us  to  expect.  We 
have  confined  our  attention  perhaps  too  closely  to  the  Christian 
Religion.  This,  however,  is  not  intended  as  a  disparagement  of 
the  science  of  Comparative  Religion.  Examples  of  mdanoia 
and  saintliness  could  as  well  be  taken  from  Mohametanism  or 
Buddhism.  The  results  obtained  no  doubt  differ  but  the  process 
of  Religion  as  an  experience  is  in  no  way  different.  It  would  be 
interesting  to  push  our  investigations  into  an  examination  of  the 
psychology  developed  along  with  Buddhism  and  the  Yogi  phi- 
losophy of  Hinduism.  There  is  a  field  of  research  open,  also,  to 
anyone  who  will  classify  the  various  expressions  of  religious  emo- 
tions in  the  lower  orders  of  human  society  and  examine  the  ideas 
which  give  them  vitality  and  potency.  The  greatest  part  of  the 
service  which  psychology  can  give  to  a  philosophy  of  religion  and 
a  proof  of  the  existence  of  the  Object  of  Religion  is  yet  to  be  ren- 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF   RELIGION.  43 

dered,  but  it  is  gratifying  to  see  that  the  tendency  of  thought  at 
present  is  to  compel  this  branch  of  science  to  render  its  full  tale 
of  service.  And  this  tendency  is  in  line  with  a  return  to  experi- 
ence as  a  basis  of  knowledge  in  Religion  as  in  other  affairs.  In 
this  connection  Professor  James  says:1  "The  inner  state  is  our 
very  experience  itself;  its  reality  and  that  of  our  experience  are 
one.  A  conscious  field  plus  its  object  as  felt  or  thought  of  plus  an 
attitude  towards  the  object  plus  the  sense  of  a  self  to  whom  the 
attitude  belongs  —  such  a  concrete  bit  of  personal  experience  may 
be  a  small  bit,  but  it  is  a  solid  bit  as  long  as  it  lasts;  not  hollow, 
not  a  mere  abstract  element  of  experience,  such  as  the  object  is 
when  taken  alone."  By  object  he  means  the  object  of  science  : 2 
"  To  describe  the  world  with  all  the  various  feelings  of  the  indi- 
vidual pinch  of  destiny,  all  the  various  spiritual  attitudes,  left  out 
from  the  description  —  they  being  as  describable  as  anything  else 
-  would  be  something  like  offering  a  printed  bill  of  fare  as  the 
equivalent  of  a  solid  meal."  Religion  makes  no  such  blunder. 

Monism.  —  It  is  this  recognition  of  the  totality  of  experience 
which  we  hail  as  hopeful.  The  totality  and  oneness  of  reality 
appeals  to  us.  There  are  advantages  in  taking  isolated  objects 
and  viewing  them  in  their  isolation  as  though  they  contained 
finality,  but  such  piece  work  is  unreasonable  if  it  has  not  in  view 
the  relations  of  the  object  even  in  the  completest  possible  isola- 
tion. It  is  this  very  completeness,  this  most  perfectness  of  being 
which  the  Ontological  concept  constantly  holds  before  us.  Thus 
Religious  Experience  is  the  door  through  which  life  enters  into 
the  knowledge  of  this  most  perfect  temple  of  reality. 


III. 

EXPERIENCE  AS  KNOWLEDGE. 

Anselm  adopted  the  principle  "  credo  ut  intelligam."  This  pre- 
cept contains  an  appreciation  and  a  protest.  It  does  not  sever 
Religion  and  knowledge  as  Scepticism  and  Transcendental  Ideal- 

1  James,  "  Varieties  of  Keligious  Experience,"  p.  498. 
2 James,  "Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  500. 


44  THE   IDEA    OF   GOD. 

ism  do  and  it  does  not  accept  blindly  the  ecclesiastical  "credo 
quia  absurdum."  The  protest  consists  in  an  admitted  restlessness 
under  faith  as  a  finality.  Experience  which  includes  faith  has  as 
its  goal  knowledge.  Religion  cannot  be  satisfactorily  tied  to  an 
isolated  faculty  of  a  trinal  facultied  soul.  It  is  not  "a  feeling  of 
absolute  dependence  "  alone  and  it  is  not  "  the  will  to  live  "  alone 
much  less  is  it  "  knowledge  "  in  the  Hegelian  sense.  Any  attempt 
at  a  definition l  along  these  lines  must  prove  abortive.  The  entire 
being  is  a  unit  in  a  religious  state.  But  this  is  not  to  deny  that 
there  is  a  religious  function  in  each  of  the  faculties  of  the  mind 
taken  individually.  The  contention  of  Abelard  for  the  thesis 
"  Ratio  prsecedit  fidem "  was  intended  to  free  reason  from  the 
bondage  of  tradition.  To  the  extent  that  this  bondage  was  real 
the  work  of  Abelard  was  valuable,  but  the  reaction  which  he  in- 
troduced soon  passed  to  the  other  extreme  of  Rationalism.  One 
of  these  extremes  is  as  bad  as  the  other.  To  be  sure  irrational 
tradition  must  be  excluded.  At  the  same  time  no  intelligent  phi- 
losophy of  life  can  be  constructed  which  severs  rational  from  sensi- 
ble experience.  I  have  all  along  interpreted  Anselm's  method  as 
a  natural  method  of  proceeding  from  experience  to  knowledge. 
He  discovered  the  identity  of  the  idea  of  God  in  the  intellect  with 
the  God  of  faith  in  experience.  To  deny  one  would  be  to  doubt 
the  other  and  to  doubt  consciousness  is  impossible. 

There  are  two  very  significant  verifications  of  Anselm's  method 
which  remain  to  be  noticed.  In  the  first  place  it  harmonizes  with 
the  fact  of  historic  revelation  and  in  the  second  place  it  serves  as  a 
regulative  to  Mysticism.  We  have  two  great  human  phenomena 
one  a  fact  and  the  other  a  theory  confronting  and  antagonizing  each 
other.  Mysticism  has  had  a  wide  currency  both  in  ancient  and  in 
modern  times.  It  has  doubtless  exercised  a  more  or  less  whole- 
some influence  on  the  development  of  Religion  but  its  claims  are 
out  of  harmony  with  the  facts  of  history.  Its  root  is  likely  to  be 
found  in  those  floods  of  enthusiasm  which  we  have  had  occasion 
to  notice  in  the  last  chapter.  Let  us  again  postpone  its  discussion 
until  we  have  given  more  consideration  to  Historic  Revelation  and 
Enthusiasm. 

iCaird,  "Int.  Phil.  Eel." 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   RELIGION.  45 

Revelation.  —  Every  Religion  has  a  history.  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted, however,  that  the  sacred  books  of  no  other  Religion  can  be 
compared  with  the  sacred  books  of  Christianity  and  Judaism  in 
their  identification  of  the  revelation  of  the  Object  of  Religion  with 
the  historic  development  of  a  nation  and  an  individual.  Take  the 
life  of  Jesus  and  the  history  of  Israel  out  of  the  Old  and  the  New 
Testament  and  there  remains  a  chaos.  Buddha  was  an  enlightened 
one  who  pointed  out  the  eightfold  path,  the  Vedas  contain  the 
principles  of  a  philosophy,  theogonies  and  ethical  teachings  are 
found  in  other  sacred  writings,  but  Christianity  is  a  life  and  a  his- 
tory. Lessing  was  one  of  the  first  to  draw  attention  to  this  fact 
in  his  Education  of  the  Human  Race  and  its  importance  has  been 
magnified  along  with  the  development  theory  of  history.  His- 
torical revelation  goes  along  with  the  historical  development  of 
Religion.  It  is  accumulated  experience  on  the  spiritual  side  of  life. 

Such  a  theory  of  Revelation  is  verified  by  Psychology.  A  rev- 
elation in  whatever  way  it  is  given  must  be  received  by  the 
understanding  and  the  understanding  is  limited  by  time,  space  and 
the  categories.  Whatever  truths  are  received  or  communicated 
are  subject  to  these  forms.  Neither  does  experience  ever  deny 
them  and  for  this  reason  a  revelation  or  a  theory  of  revelation 
which  is  conformable  to  experience  is  most  acceptable.  Let  us 
see  how  this  applies  in  the  examination  of  enthusiasm. 

Enthusiasm.  —  When  we  pass  to  the  method  of  Revelations,  the 
claims  of  experience  take  a  manifold  form.  I  use  the  word  En- 
thusiasm in  its  etymological  sense  as  broader  than  the  theological 
term  Inspiration.  It  signifies  all  that  could  be  determined  by  the 
expression  God-consciousness.  A  confused  multitude  of  arahats, 
mahatmas,  mediums,  pythons,  seers  and  witches  rush  to  our  imag- 
ination at  the  mention  of  these  terms.  Unless  it  is  intended  to 
abandon  our  search  we  must  at  this  point  again  turn  to  psychology 
for  a  guiding  hand.  The  reproach  of  the  blatant  atheist  that  all 
these  creatures  have  experiences  is  immediately  upon  us.  And  it 
is  unquestionably  a  fact  that  religions  best  and  worst  have  not 
despised  this  fellowship.  Visions,  dreams,  ecstatic  states,  epileptic 
fits,  intoxications  and  all  kindred  psychical  phenomena  have  been 


46  THE   IDEA   OF   GOD. 

used  by  religiously  disposed  persons  as  a  means  of  getting  into 
contact  with  the  unseen  world.  All  sacred  books  and  many  sacred 
performances  bear  witness  to  these  statements.  And  it  is  having 
fellowship  of  this  character  which  gives  some  ground  to  those  who 
class  Religion  with  other  manifestations  of  degeneration.  How 
are  we  to  meet  the  scoffs  of  those  who  make  such  charges?  Cer- 
tainly neither  with  a  denial  nor  an  apology. 

In  the  first  place  putting  aside  the  objectionable  features  of  such 
manifestations  of  Religion  we  hold  to  their  positive  content.  They 
bear  witness  to  the  presence  of  religious  emotions  and  ideas.  "  He 
that  cometh  unto  God  must  believe  that  he  is."  All  of  these 
efforts  to  get  into  contact  with  the  spirit  world  are  direct  evidence 
of  a  belief  in  that  world.  The  best  answer,  by  way  of  illustra- 
tion, to  those  who  deny  that  the  Israelites  believed  in  immortality 
is  the  story  of  the  Witch  of  Endor.  Such  a  bit  of  folk-lore  out- 
weighs volumes  of  doctrine.  And  all  those  objectionable  features 
such  as  necromancy,  witchcraft  and  frenzy,  possess  such  a  kernel 
of  veritable  experience.  They  represent  crude  methods  by  which 
the  idea  seeks  to  fulfil  its  purpose  by  finding  its  Object. 

Methods  of  Enthusiasm.  —  Perhaps  it  will  not  be  amiss  to  ex- 
amine some  of  these  methods.  The  dream  is  no  doubt  the  earliest 
mediumistic  process.  The  Hebrew  Sacred  writings  are  true  to 
nature  in  putting  this  method  of  revelation  in  its  historic  place  as 
primitive.  Abraham,  Jacob  and  Pharaoh  received  revelations  in 
dreams  and  Joseph  achieved  a  reputation  for  wisdom  as  a  dream 
interpreter.  In  this  respect  the  Israelites  were  not  singular.  I 
mention  them  because  they  incorporate  this  method  of  revelation 
in  its  historic  place.  But  even  Paul,  a  cultured  religious  spirit, 
did  not  despise  the  gate  of  dreams  as  a  means  of  access  to  the 
spirit  world. 

Dreams,  however,  do  not  offer  a  sufficiently  pliant  means  of 
enthusiasm.  A  revelation  is  needed  for  a  certain  time  and  the 
dream  power  cannot  be  depended  upon  to  furnish  it.  There  were 
other  methods  early  discovered  by  which  religiously  disposed 
minds  sought  to  extend  the  limits  of  consciousness.  One  of  these 
means  was  the  use  of  intoxicants.  The  deification  of  S<ma  and 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   RELIGION.  47 

Bacchus  and  the  fact  that  Israelitish  prophets l  were  open  to  the 
reproach  that  they  prophesied  through  wine  can  scarcely  be  inter- 
preted in  any  other  way  than  as  an  effort  to  obtain  a  revelation 
by  stimulation. 

As  a  third  method  the  mediumistic  trance  or  ecstasy  might  be 
mentioned.  The  story  of  Balaam  furnishes  a  primitive  example. 
The  means  used  in  that  particular  case  are  not  recorded  but  numer- 
ous devices  are  well  known  by  which  the  mind  can  be  physically 
transported.  Weird  music,  dizziness  produced  by  over-violent 
exercises  as  well  as  conscious  control  over  rational  consciousness, 
are  known  to  accomplish  the  desired  effects.  The  Yogi  of  India 
have  worked  these  processes  out  experimentally  and  have  devel- 
oped along  with  them  a  valuable  psychological  philosophy.  To- 
gether with  these  experiences  epileptoid  phenomena  are  to  be 
classed  and  possibly  all  pathological  experiences. 

So  much  then  for  the  facts.  Any  treatise  on  Anthropology 
would  add  to  them  indefinitely.  That  they  produce  much  spuri- 
ous and  self-contradictory  material  is  certain.  Nevertheless  they 
belong  to  a  sum  total  of  world  experience  and  cannot  be  indo- 
lently swept  into  the  abyss. 

What  then  has  psychology  to  say  of  these  experiences  and  this 
matter  of  fact  ?  The  first  thing  that  must  strike  one  in  attending 
to  these  phenomena  is  that  they  all  express  an  effort  to  extend 
the  limits  of  ordinary  consciousness.  The  temptation  to  do  this 
is  involved  in  dream  and  trance  experiences.  The  development 
of  experience  proves  that  the  same  effects  are  obtainable  in  other 
ways,  and  this  discovery  having  once  been  made  the  mind  reason- 
ably attempts  to  make  use  of  it  in  self-directed  attempts  to  tran- 
scend barriers  which  stand  as  present  obstacles.  The  senses  do 
not  discover  to  consciousness  all  of  reality.  If  by  way  of  illus- 
tration, we  adopt  a  vibratory  theory  of  perception  and  suppose 
that  each  of  the  senses  run  a  certain  gamut,  it  is  a  pure  matter  of 
physics  to  demonstrate  that  there  are  gaps  between  the  gamuts  of 
the  senses.  Sight  is  blind  to  certain  light  waves  and  hearing  is 
deaf  to  certain  sound  waves.  Thus  for  purely  physical  perception 


48  THE   IDEA   OF    GOD. 

consciousness  is  incomplete.  Nothing  could  be  more  evident  than 
that  reality  is  larger  and  richer  than  consciousness,  and  any  at- 
tempt to  enlarge  experience  is,  therefore,  justifiable  however  irra- 
tional it  may  be  in  method. 

We  must  turn  to  specialists  in  the  field  of  Psychology  for  a 
verification  of  this  last  statement.  The  subliminal  region  of  con- 
sciousness cannot  be  ignored.  Too  many  well-authenticated  facts 
of  experience  arise  in  that  region  to  forbid  its  being  indifferently 
passed  by.  "  It l  is  the  abode  of  everything  that  is  latent  and  the 
reservoir  of  everything  that  passes  unrecorded  and  unobserved. 
It  contains,  for  example,  such  things  as  all  our  momentarily  active 
memories,  and  it  harbors  the  springs  of  all  our  obscurely  motived 
passions,  impulses,  likes,  dislikes  and  prejudices.  Our  intuitions, 
hypotheses,  fancies,  superstitions,  persuasions,  convictions  and  in 
general  all  our  nonrational  operations  come  from  it.  It  is  the 
source  of  our  dreams  and  apparently  they  may  return  to  it.  In 
it  arises  whatever  mystical  experiences  we  may  have,  etc."  Thus 
Professor  James  describes  the  subconsious  self.  The  entire  sub- 
ject is  more  fully  discussed  in  the  recent  work  by  Professor  F. 
W.  H.  Myers,  Human  Personality  and  its  Survival  of  Bodily 
Death.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  light  of  Psychology  has 
served  to  verify  the  anticipations  of  Religion.  In  other  words, 
Religion  has  not  followed  a  phantom  when  its  idea  seeks  to  verify 
its  Object.  Its  instinct  at  least  was  true  in  seeking  in  the  sub- 
conscious regions  of  self  for  the  intermediary  or  nexus  between 
self  and  God.  The  discovery  of  the  existence  of  the  subconsci- 
ous self  belongs  to  the  last  twenty  years,  and  the  scientific  obser- 
vation of  its  facts  is  still  in  its  infancy  but  so  far  its  verifications 
are  by  no  means  subversive  of  what  religious  experiences  have 
established. 

Tests  of  Enthusiasm.  —  To  revert  now  to  the  somewhat  disrep- 
utable collection  of  enthusiasts  mentioned  in  this  section,  the 
question  may  be  asked  :  If  psychology  accredits  the  phenomena 
of  dreams,  trances,  visions  and  such  like  unrational  phenomena, 
what  clue  can  be  taken  to  discern  the  true  from  the  false  and  the 

1  James,  "Varieties  ofKeligious  Experience,"  p.  483. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF    RELIGION.  49 

valuable  from  the  worthless  ?  This  is  an  important  question  in 
the  development  of  the  relation'  between  experience  and  the 
Ontological  idea.  The  religious  life  would  simply  be  deluged  if 
every  dream  and  figment  of  a  fevered  brain  were  accepted  as 
authoritative  in  rational  life.  Here,  however,  the  pressure  of  the 
limitations  of  life  serve  a  regulative  purpose.  Only  those  com- 
munications with  the  supersensuous  world  which  aid  in  tran- 
scending limitations  are  valuable.  They  alone  are  accredited  by 
truth.  In  other  words,  rational  experience  verifies  the  message 
of  the  prophets.  Lying  spirits  are  distinguished  from  true  spirits 
by  the  event.  In  the  remarkable  tradition  of  Micaiah l  and  the 
four  hundred  prophets  there  was  no  recourse  but  to  wait  for  the 
issue.  Truth  and  value  thus  come  to  be  the  tests  of  enthusiasm. 
There  is  an  analogy  in  the  opening  of  the  combination  lock. 
The  mind  which  sets  the  combination  has  a  purpose  and  the  per- 
son who  opens  the  lock  must  arrive  at  the  purpose  of  the  other 
mind.  This  analogy  at  the  same  time  is  unfortunate  for  the  rea- 
son that  the  purpose  in  the  combination  is  intentionally  obscure 
while  the  purpose  of  life  is  sympathetic  and  the  seeker  after 
the  Object  of  Religion  is  consciously  rewarded  by  each  turn  in  the 
right  direction. 

In  these  two  ideas  there  are  to  be  found  the  motive  and  cor- 
rective of  Enthusiasm.  In  the  first  place  there  is  the  broad  reality 
which  sensibility  only  partially  discovers  and  experience  is  al- 
ways bearing  witness,  through  various  phenomena,  that  a  subcon- 
scious contact  with  this  reality  beyond  the  senuous  contact  is 
possible.  The  forms  of  enthusiasm  represent  developments  of 
these  subconscious  methods.  And  in  the  second  place  truth  and 
value  serve  as  regulative  principles  which  correct  the  extrava- 
gances of  enthusiasm.  The  understanding  is  under  a  constant 
temptation  to  break  away  from  the  forms  —  time,  space  and  the 
categories  —  which  its  nature  imposes  as  the  true  method  of  expe- 
rience. This  temptation  is  pressed  by  the  subconscious  self  and 
the  successes  of  Religion  in  discovering  a  content  for  the  Idea  of 
God  give  to  it  a  certain  amount  of  strength. 

a  Kings,  22. 


50  THE   IDEA   OF    GOD. 

Mysticism.  —  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  Founder  of 
Christianity  did  not  make  use  of  any  of  the  methods  of  enthusiasm. 
Dreams,  theophanies,  epileptic  fits  and  metanoia  have  no  place  in 
his  experience.  The  nearest  approach  to  any  of  these  processes 
is  to  be  found  in  the  accounts  of  His  Baptism  and  Transfiguration, 
and  of  these  He  does  not  make  mention  in  His  teaching.  The 
reason  for  this  difference  from  other  religious  teachers  is  to  be 
found  in  the  peculiar  claims  of  Jesus.  His  conscious  relation  to 
the  Object  of  Religion  was  such  that  any  method  of  communication 
would  have  been  an  interference.  His  life  was  a  union  with  and 
revelation  of  the  Father.  The  relation  was  such  that  He  could 
truly  say  I  and  the  Father  are  one. 

This  relation  has  ever  been  the  ideal  aim  of  Mysticism.  As  a 
theory  of  knowledge  mysticism  magnifies  intuition.  It  endeavors 
to  come  into  direct  contact  with  reality.  The  senses  are  condemned 
because  of  their  errors  and  deceptions.  The  true  method  of  knowl- 
edge is  to  know  God  and  through  him  to  know  his  works.  The 
tempting  possibilities  of  enthusiasm  have  given  encouragement  to 
Mysticism.  This,  no  doubt,  accounts  for  its  appearance  in  so 
many  widely  separated  centers  of  thought.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
the  development  of  our  theme  to  enter  into  a  detailed  account  of 
its  methods  and  usefulness.  Its  weakness  is  its  unnaturalness- 
It  does  violence  to  the  progressive  method  of  revelation  both  in 
life  and  in  history.  To  know  reality  entirely  and  immediately 
and  then,  being  creatures  of  the  forms  of  thought,  to  fill  in  after- 
ward the  details  of  experience  would  be  to  overturn  all  that  is 
intelligible  in  human  life. 

The  Ontological  Proof  by  giving  due  place  to  experience  serves 
as  a  corrective  to  mysticism.  No  exponent  of  the  a  priori  method 
would  claim  that  the  Ontological  Idea  is  an  intuitive  apprehension 
of  the  most  perfect  being.  It  is  an  Idea  related  to  experience  and 
to  which  experience  furnishes  a  content. 

Buddhism.  —  There  are  two  remarks  which  appear  to  be  appro- 
priate to  our  examination  of  Enthusiasm.  The  first  is  in  reference 
to  Buddhism.1  It  was  certainly  a  profound  observation  which 

1  Khys-Davids,  "Buddhism,"  p.  120. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    RELIGION.  51 

led  the  author  of  that  Religion  in  constructing  the  Wheel  of  Life 
to  place  the  Sankharas  between  ignorance  and  consciousness.  The 
confection,  the  putting  together,  must  precede  the  consciousness. 
But  on  the  other  hand  Buddhism  lacks  that  conception  of  a  con- 
tinuum which  Kant  used  with  such  good  effect  in  the  phenomenal 
world.  In  our  conception  the  Sankharas  or  the  confection  bound 
together  in  a  continuum  is  the  subconscious  self  from  which  con- 
sciousness springs. 

The  Social  Consciousness.  —  The  other  remark  is  concerning  the 
social  consciousness.  There  is  little  hope  of  working  out  a  con- 
sistent theory  of  any  form  of  this  phenomena,  until  some  ,better 
Philosophy  of  the  Unconscious  has  been  worked  out.  Social 
scientists  up  to  this  time  have  accepted  a  social  consciousness  as  a 
fact  and  have  built  upon  it  in  a  more  or  less  unsatisfactory  way, 
but  its  essence  has  not  yet  been  sufficiently  discovered.  The  work 
of  psychologists  in  entering  the  subconscious  precincts  of  the  soul, 
whether  we  call  this  region  the  Sankharas  with  Buddha  or  the 
Oversoul  with  Emerson,  is  the  most  hopeful  effort  that  has  been 
made  to  build  up  a  science  of  social  self-consciousness. 

The  God-Idea.  —  The  ground  of  religious  experience  has  now 
been  sufficiently  traversed  to  allow  us  to  introduce  the  process  of 
the  unfolding  of  the  God-idea.  We  have  found  that  this  idea 
stands  over  against  experience  in  toto  and  that  its  purpose  acts  as 
a  mediator  between  the  facts  of  experience  and  the  infinite  beyond. 
Like  the  dove  sent  out  of  the  ark  it  finds  no  place  to  rest.  It 
searches  in  the  realm  of  material  things  and  finds  some  objects 
and  events  which  are  true  and  valuable  for  the  conscious  self  but 
each  of  these  objects  and  events  lacks  permanence  and  finality.1 
Therefore  at  some  stage  of  religious  history  the  mind  becomes 
introspective  in  its  search  for  a  fulfilment  of  its  ontological  pur- 
pose. Various  kinds  of  revelations  were  brought  to  light  from 
the  conscious  and  subliminal  regions  of  the  mind.  It  does  not 
matter  whether  revelations  were  derived  from  dreams,  intoxica- 
tions, auto-intoxications  or  the  Holy  Spirit,  they  had  to  come  to 
men  as  experiences  and  were  necessarily  subject  to  the  forms  of 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  121. 


52  THE    IDEA    OF    GOD. 

thought.  It  was  also  necessary  to  subject  all  revelations  to  the 
tests  of  truth  and  value.  The  process  of  unfolding  the  God-idea 
was  a  process  of  building  up  experience  according  to  the  rule  and 
plummet  of  these  two  tests.  It  is  only  necessary  to  arrive  at  a 
true  history  of  Religion  to  reach  a  description  of  this  process.  Two 
or  three  things  may  be  found  on  the  surface.  In  the  first  place 
the  concept  of  material  helpfulness  is  everywhere  first  apparent. 
In  fact  many  religious  lives  never  pass  beyond  that  thought  of 
God.  The  supreme  being  is  God  Almighty.  As  the  conception 
of  the  worth  of  knowledge  reveals  the  preciousness  of  wisdom,  it  is 
added,  and  the  all- wise  God  is  worshiped.  It  was  not  in  vain 
that  religiously-disposed  persons  sought  by  fasting  to  come  into 
contact  with  the  spirit  world,  for  their  devotion  and  self-sacrifice 
gave  prominence  to  the  internal  values  of  life.  They  brought  the 
virtues  into  distinction  and  in  this  way  the  ethical  content  of  the 
Ontological  Idea  was  supplied.  The  conception  of  a  Good  God 
cannot  be  surpassed  but  it  requires  an  ever-deepening  experience 
to  analyze  its  significance.  Such  expressions  as  God  is  a  spirit, 
God  is  truth  and  God  is  love  are  necessarily  final.  The  last  and 
highest  revelation  of  God  which  Judaism  endeavored  to  utter  and 
Jesus  express  by  his  life  is  union  with  humanity,  and  into  this 
helpful  and  blessed  relationship  all  souls  are  freely  invited  to 
enter.  The  Father  was  in  Jesus  and  He  is  also  in  all  those  who 
receive  Jesus  in  a  real  experience. 

What  I  have  said  is  not  intended  as  a  denial  of  a  supernatural 
revelation.  It  is  an  assertion  of  it.  It  is  not  intended  to  deny 
that  some  souls  have  had  a  greater  enduement  with  the  Holy 
Ghost  than  others.  It  is,  however,  intended  that  these  experiences 
should  be  included  with  other  religious  experiences.  It  would 
also  be  claimed,  that  all  religious  experiences  are  accompanied  by 
definite  psychological  processes.  But  the  heart  of  our  contention 
is  that  every  religious  experience  has  been  accompanied  by  the 
form  of  the  Ontological  Idea  and  that  the  will  of  this  Idea  has 
served  a  constructive  purpose. 


PART  III. 
THE   IDEA   OF   GOD   AND   ETHICS. 

I. 

ETHICAL  PRINCIPLES. 

Methods.  —  "  Whether  the  treatment  of  that  class  of  knowledge 
with  which  reason  is  occupied  follows  the  secure  method  of  a 
science  or  not,  can  easily  be  determined  by  the  result.  If,  after 
repeated  preparation,  it  comes  to  a  standstill,  as  soon  as  its  real 
goal  is  approached,  or  is  obliged,  in  order  to  reach  it,  to  retrace 
its  steps  again  and  again,  and  strike  into  fresh  paths ;  again,  if  it 
is  impossible  to  produce  unanimity  among  those  who  are  engaged 
in  the  same  work,  as  to  the  manner  in  which  their  common  object 
should  be  obtained,  we  may  be  convinced  that  such  a  study  is  far 
from  having  attained  to  the  secure  method  of  a  science,  but  is 
groping  only  in  the  dark."  l  These  words  with  which  Kant  began 
the  preface  to  the  second  edition  of  his  Critique  of  Pure  Reason, 
come  to  our  memory  very  forcibly  as  we  enter  the  field  of  ethics. 
Standing  along  with  Religion  in  the  border  land  of  physics  and 
metaphysics  this  field  has  been  the  scene  of  much  fierce  contro- 
versy. If  we  begin  by  defining  Ethics  as  "  the  science  of  con- 
duct/' 2  the  way  might  appear  to  be  clear  enough ;  but  conduct  or 
"  all  moral  action  "  as  Aristotle  says,  "  that  is  all  purpose  —  would 
seem  to  aim  at  some  good  result." 3  In  other  words  conduct  is 
traceable  to  character  and  character  to  self  and  self  to  being  or 
reality.  The  Agnostic  thereupon  appears  who  knows  nothing  of 
Reality  and  ignores  all  but  the  facts  of  conduct.  For  him  Ethics 

1  Kant,  "  Critique  of  Pure  Keason."     Max  Miiller  trans.,  p.  688. 

2  Seth,  "  Ethical  Principles." 
'Aristotle,  "  Nic.  Ethics,"  p.  1. 

53 


54  THE    IDEA   OF    GOD. 

is  simply  a  science  which  treats  of  man  as  a  part  of  nature.  On 
the  other  hand  the  Kantian  transcendentalist  appears  who  classi- 
fies the  moral  agent  in  the  phenomenal  world  but  asserts  that  his 
freedom  belongs  to  the  intelligible  world.  And  in  the  third  place 
the  Hegelian  transcendentalist  asserts  "the  entire  immanence  of 
God  in  the  process  of  the  universe."  1  With  three  such  extremes 
the  prospect  of  peace  is  not  visible.  Thus  it  has  ever  been  in  the 
field  of  Ethics.  Treatises  on  Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  Problems 
of  Conduct  and  Methods  of  Ethics  are  necessary  to  clear  the 
ground.  With  these  facts  before  us  it  is  certainly  evident  that 
"the  sure  method  of  a  science"  of  Ethics  has  not  yet  been 
discovered. 

Our  interest  in  this  class  of  discussions  arises  from  the  close 
relation  which  Ethics  bears  to  Religion.  To  be  sure  the  Positivist 
who  ignores  the  idea  of  God  as  a  norm  of  ethics  will  deny  this 
relation,  but  we  have  an  unanswerable  reply  to  his  denial  in  the 
facts  of  history.  It  is  the  purpose  of  this  concluding  part  of  our 
thesis  to  show  that  the  Ontological  Idea  in  its  practical  signifi- 
cance offers  a  dynamic  to  Ethics.2 

We  have  already  accepted  the  challenge  of  the  scientist.  When 
he  demanded  that  we  should  be  guided  by  experience  we  acceded 
to  his  demands  but  required  that  the  sum  total  of  experience  shall 
be  included.  Our  examination  of  religious  experience  as  discov- 
ered by  anthropology  and  tested  by  psychology  revealed  that  the 
concept  of  God  has  a  vital  content.  We  must  now  subject  the 
facts  of  Ethics  from  which  the  Positivist  would  construct  his  science 
to  the  same  examination.  The  same  analysis  of  the  content  of 
consciousness,  to  which  the  Ontological  proof  directed  our  atten- 
tion at  first,  will  continue  to  serve  as  a  guiding  principle  and  we 
use  it  with  'the  greater  confidence  since  it  has  already  given  us  so 
much  help  in  the  examination  of  religious  experience.  Before  we 
enter  upon  this  examination,  however,  it  may  be  well  to  remind 
ourselves  that  the  Problem  of  Ethics  is  "the  interpretation  of  our 


Ethical  Principles,"  p.  390. 
2Martineau,  "  Study  of  Religion,"   1:16;  Flint,    "  Theism,"  p.  242;    also 
Miiller's  "Natural  Religion,"  p.  170. 


THE    IDEA    OF    GOD    AND    ETHICS.  55 

judgments  of  ethical  value. "]  We  are  also  concerned  with  Aris- 
totle's identification  of  moral  action  with  purpose.  In  other  words, 
there  is  an  intention  inseparably  connected  with  every  moral  act. 
These  two  facts  then,  the  purpose  of  action  and  our  judgment 
upon  the  action  with  its  purpose,  are  at  the  root  of  the  Problem  of 
Ethics. 

The  discovery  of  a  purpose  at  the  heart  of  every  moral  act  can- 
not fail  to  remind  us  of  the  intention  of  ideas  which  we  met  with 
in  the  analysis  of  consciousness.  Neither  do  we  forget  that  the 
purpose  of  the  Ontological  Idea  is  to  seek  its  Other  in  a  concretely 
embodied  life.  Here  is  a  purpose,  then,  which  must  express  itself 
in  action,  in  action  directed  toward  a  definite  end,  and  here  stands 
ethical  conduct  on  the  other  hand,  as  action  directed  toward  a  defi- 
nite end,  which  must  be  joined  with,  and  judged  by  its  purpose. 
What  would  hinder  our  identifying  these  two  purposes  ?  The  fact 
that  this  question  arises  is  the  reason  for  our  extending  our  search 
for  the  practical  content  of  the  Ontological  Proof  to  the  field  of 
ethics.  The  quest  of  the  Ontological  Idea  for  its  Other  or  in  the 
language  of  Religion  the  heart's  quest  for  God  is  a  mighty  quest. 
Let  us  not  suppose  that  the  purpose  of  an  idea  because  it  is  tran- 
scendental must  therefore  be  weak  and  despised.  We  have  but  to 
pause  for  a  moment  and  remember  the  constructive  power  of  ideas 
to  convince  ourselves  that  we  are  not  speaking  of  mere  figments  of 
the  imagination.  The  Idea  of  God  leading  and  compelling  men 
through  its  purpose  has  given  the  world  its  Religion  with  all  that 
this  significant  word  includes.  And  it  is  the  contention  of  this 
thesis  that  the  same  purpose  of  the  same  idea  is  the  motive  of 
ethical  action.  It  does  not  matter  whether  I  ask  with  Kant2 
"  What  ought  I  to  do  ? "  or  whether  I  say  with  Aristotle  "  At 
what  shall  I  aim  ?  "  whether  I  make  doing  or  being,  conduct  or 
character  the  chief  end  of  life,  this  purpose  is  at  the  heart  of  it  all. 
Aristotle  said  of  the  supreme  good  —  "Surely  then  a  scientific 
knowledge  of  it  will  have  a  critical  influence  upon  our  lives,  and 
will  make  us,  like  bowmen  who  have  a  mark  at  which  to  aim,  all 

JSeth,  "  Ethical  Principles,"  p.  37. 

2  Kant,  "  Critique  of  Pure  Keason,"  p.  646. 


56  THE    IDEA    OF    GOD. 

the  more  likely  to  hit  upon  that  which  is  our  good."  If  this 
is  true  concerning  the  supreme  good  by  how  much  more  is  it  true 
concerning  God  and  if  it  can  be  shown  that  the  course  of  human 
actions  has  been  changed  by  the  force  of  their  Idea  of  God  we  have 
thus  found  an  additional  content  for  the  Ontological  Idea. 

By  the  purpose  of  an  idea  I  mean  that  which  redeems  it  from 
chaos.  A  chord  of  music,  this  pen  with  which  I  write,  or  a 
human  being  is  an  embodied  purpose  and  without  the  purpose 
there  would  be  no  idea  involved  in  them.  When  we  speak,  there- 
fore, of  the  purpose  of  the  Ontological  Idea  we  mean  that  which 
renders  it  self-consistent  and  intelligible.  In  this  particular  case 
the  purpose  is  perfection  which  we  think  of  as  the  greatest  con- 
ceivable. This  perfection  varies  subjectively  with  the  mind  which 
conceives  it  but  it  has  a  progressive  definiteness.  It  involves  a 
grasp  of  the  content  of  the  Object  of  which  it  is  an  idea  and  a 
reaction  upon  the  individual  to  whom  the  idea  belongs.  For  this 
reason  we  devoted  the  second  part  of  this  thesis  to  an  examination 
of  the  religious  emotions  as  elements  of  conscious  experience  and 
unfolded  their  relation  to  the  Object  of  Religion.  This  consti- 
tutes the  subjective  aspect  of  our  subject.  But  a  purpose  as  an 
active  principle  compels  expression  and  Religion,  therefore,  must 
have,  as  it  is  well  known  it  does  have,  an  objective  aspect  which 
I  would  call  the  ethical  function  of  Religion.  It  is  the  purpose  of 
the  Ontological  Idea  to  mould  the  individual  and  social  life  into 
harmony  with  its  anticipation  of  the  Object  of  Religion.  In  the 
language  of  every-day  life  Ethics  is  the  effect  of  the  knowledge  of 
God  in  the  moral  life  of  men.  In  fact  we  have  drawn  near  to 
Max  Miiller's  theory,2  that  "  religion  consists  in  the  perception  of 
the  infinite  under  such  manifestations  as  are  able  to  influence  the 
moral  character  of  man."  Our  position  differs  from  this,  in  hold- 
ing that  the  Infinite  is  an  Idea  which  embraces  the  perception  of 
finite  objects,  but  we  agree  with  the  contention  that  it  influences 
the  moral  character. 

Relation  to  Science  and  Religion.  —  In  the  first  place,  then,  the 
matter  of  fact  of  conduct  belongs  to  experience.  As  matter  of 

1  Aristotle,  "Nic.  Ethics,"  p.  2,  trans.  Williams. 
2Miiller,  "Natural  Keligion,"  p.  188. 


THE  IDEA  OF  GOD  AND  ETHICS.  57 

fact  it  constitutes  the  subject  matter  of  a  science.  In  so  far  it  is 
proper  to  speak  of  the  science  of  Ethics  rather  than  the  meta- 
physics of  Ethics.  The  facts  of  Ethics  also  belong  to  the  events 
of  history  and  as  such  the  genetic  method  of  treatment  is  appli- 
cable to  them.  On  the  other  hand  it  is  necessary  to  subject  the 
facts  which  science  gathers  and  systematizes,  in  a  qualitative  man- 
ner. Their  relation  to  other  facts  in  a  sum  total  of  life  expe- 
riences have  to  be  assigned,  and  at  this  point  we  pass  beyond  the 
mere  that  of  ethical  experience  and  begin  to  inquire  for  the  what. 
In  this  process  we  discover  two  relations  which  any  genetic  theory 
of  Ethics  must  reveal.  The  first  is  that  Ethics  has  grown  up  with 
and  sprung  from  Religion.  In  other  words,  that  there  is  an  inti- 
mate connection  between  character  and  conduct  and  the  religious 
functions  of  life.  And  in  the  second  place,  since  conduct  springs 
from  character,  and  character  belongs  to  self  or  a  self-conscious 
being,  the  facts  of  Ethics  must  be  subjected  to  a  psychological 
treatment.  Let  us  look  first  at  the  religious  relation. 

Anthropology.  —  It  is  necessary  to  turn  to  anthropology  for  a 
proof  of  the  relation  of  Religion  to  morality.  For  historical  rea- 
sons we  cannot  accept  Kant's  assertion  that  "  amongst  all  the 
public  religions  that  have  ever  existed  the  Christian  alone  is 
moral." l  The  fact  is  that  in  primitive  culture  Religion  and 
morality  have  developed  together.  The  conceptions  which  differ- 
ent races  of  mankind  have  held  of  the  Object  of  Religion  in  differ- 
ent stages  of  their  civilization  are  distinctly  reflected  in  the 
individual  and  social  character  and  conduct  of  their  people.  Make 
a  sufficient  deduction  for  the  influence  of  nature  as  an  environ- 
ment on  the  character  of  the  inhabitants  of  a  given  district  and 
there  still  remains  an  overplus  of  influence  arising  from  the  fact  of 
nature  worship.  The  culture  of  Greece,  the  sanguinary  forceful- 
ness  of  the  Norse  and  the  contemplative  disposition  of  the  Hindu 
each  reflect  the  environment  which  worked  itself  into  their  On  to- 
logical  Idea.  There  are  in  the  peoples  of  each  of  these  nations 
certain  features,  decidedly  unmoral,  which  are  to  be  accounted  for 
by  the  incompleteness  of  the  Theogonic  process ;  but  these  facts 

1  Abbott,  "  Kant's  Theory  of  Ethics,"  p.  360. 


58  THE    IDEA    OF    GOD. 

do  Dot  conceal  from  us  the  moral  influences  of  their  Religion.  In 
the  next  place  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  races,  which  continue  -to 
hold  animistic  conceptions,  fail  to  reveal  elevated  standards  of 
morality ;  while,  those  races  which  have  adopted  mythical  inter- 
pretations of  the  forces  of  nature,  arriving  at  an  anthropomorphic 
polytheism  or  pantheism,  have  made  greater  progress  in  moral  cul- 
ture; And  where  materialistic  religions  have  given  way  either  to 
a  psychological  religion  such  as  Buddhism  or  spiritual  Henotheism 
as  in  Judaism  and  Christianity,  the  highest  stages  of  ethical  cul- 
ture have  been  attained.  A  God  of  righteousness  or  an  Holy 
Father,  when  represented  in  the  Ontological  Idea,  does,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  influence  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  people  who 
hold  such  an  ideal. 

These  statements  though  exceedingly  general  seem  to  me  suffi- 
cient to  establish  the  assertion  that  Religion  influences  the  moral 
character  of  the  human  race.  The  Ontological  Idea  has  constantly 
served  as  a  constructive  principle  in  Ethics.  This  is  the  thesis 
which  Kant  has  worked  out  elaborately  in  his  Theory  of  Ethics. 
There  is,  however,  a  limitation  to  the  ethical  force  of  nature  reli- 
gions. In  whatever  stage  of  culture  we  find  them  they  are  more 
or  less  necessitarian.  The  Animist  is  at  the  mercy  of  spirits  with 
which  his  mind  has  peopled  nature.  They  act  in  him  and  outside 
of  him  as  representatives  of  every  helping  or  hindering  force. 
Such  a  view  of  life  leaves  little  place  for  free  moral  action.  Cun- 
ning and  courage  are  about  the  only  practical  virtues  worth 
developing  in  connection  with  animistic  religion.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  we  turn  to  a  more  fully  developed  Polytheism  or  Pan- 
theism, fate  immediately  confronts  us.  The  gods  as  well  as  men 
in  the  Greek  mythology  were  subject  to  the  three  sisters  at  the 
loom.  A  like  necessity  ruled  the  gods  of  the  Norse  mythology. 
And  if  this  is  true  for  Polytheism  it'is  much  more  true  for  Pan- 
theism. Whether  we  look  at  this  system  as  a  religion  or  a 
philosophy  it  is  essentially  fatalistic.  The  individual  is  held  fast 
in  a  relentless  mechanism,  which  destroys  all  distinction  between 
nature  and  character,  what  is  and  what  ought  to  be,  and  to  that 
extent  an  ethic  for  the  Pantheist  is  impossible.  He  cannot  sever 


THE    IDEA    OF    GOD    AND    ETHICS.  59 

responsibility  and  liberty  in  an  ethical  idea  of  life.  It  must  be 
admitted,  if  we  follow  up  the  process,  that  Theism,  Deism  and 
materialism  are  in  a  like  manner  fatalistic.  It  does  not  matter 
whether  the  moral  agent  is  the  product  of  heredity  and  environ- 
ment or  a  part  of  a  system  governed  by  the  law  of  a  Deus  ex 
machina  or  only  a  predestined  individual,  his  liberty  is  denied  and 
to  that  extent  he  ceases  to  be  responsible.  It  is  a  fact,  however, 
that  ethical  culture  has  proceeded  under  all  these  philosophic  and 
religious  systems  but  it  has  proceeded  in  spite  of  them  and  not  by 
their  aid.  It  has  proceeded  because  of  the  subconscious  processes 
and  beliefs,  which  frequently  assert  their  power,  when  conscious 
reason  fails  to  wisely  execute  its  function.  And  this  fact,  has  no 
doubt  given  cause  for  the  endeavor  to  separate  Religion  and  Ethics. 
Genetic  Ethics,  however,  will  ever  warn  us  against  such  a  division. 
For  purposes  of  thought  it  would  be  very  convenient  to  assign 
to  Religion  the  reflective  functions  of  life  and  allow  Ethics  to  have 
complete  possession  of  the  field  of  moral  action.  This  division 
would  isolate  the  two  sciences  and  prevent  their  conflicting 
in  any  way.  So  far  as  the 'facts  of  Ethics  are  concerned  no  objec- 
tion to  this  division  could  be  raised,  but  a  difficulty  appears,  so 
soon  as  we  begin  to  look  at  the  quality  of  ethical  acts  and  judg- 
ments. When  this  is  done  a  norm  or  standard  of  judgments  is 
demanded  and  it  becomes  necessary  to  enter  the  meditative  pre- 
cincts of  the  soul.  It  is  true,  on  the  other  hand,  that,  when  we 
think  of  the  origin  of  Religion,  our  attention  is  more  occupied  with 
the  emotions  and  their  relation  to  the  Idea  of  God,  which  the 
mind  sustains  linked  with  them,  but  a  merely  internal  Religion 
would  be  fruitless.  The  religious  emotions  from  their  very  nature 
must  express  themselves.  The  purpose  of  their  idea  is  an  active 
energizing  purpose.  It  must  express  itself  in  a  living  embodi- 
ment of  activity.  This  is  to  say  that  the  activity  of  life  which 
springs  from  religious  emotions  and  ideas  belongs  as  truly  to  Re- 
ligion as  the  inner  contemplation  of  the  soul's  relation  to  God. 
Religion,  therefore,  comprehends  both  the  inner  state,  which 
represents  the  limited  self  sustaining  a  certain  relation  to  the  most 
perfect  being,  and  the  activity  by  which  the  self  seeks  to  consum- 


60  THE   IDEA   OF   GOD. 

mate  that  relation.  The  activity,  however,  being  purposive,  is 
included  by  science  in  the  sphere  of  Ethics,  but  in  no  case  is  it 
able  to  stand  alone.  On  the  contemplative  side  of  Religion  we  are 
concerned  with  the  purpose  of  the  idea  and  on  the  active  or  ethi- 
cal side  we  have  the  same  concern  with  the  will  of  the  deed.  It 
is  the  will  or  intention  which  redeems  both  the  idea  and  the  act 
from  chaos. 

Psychology.  —  The  second  requirement  of  a  genetic  treatment 
of  Ethics  is  psychological.  Moral' acts  are  originated,  regulated, 
and  governed  by  the  soul.  It  was  very  proper  therefore  of 
David  Hume  when  he  attempted  to  introduce  the  experimental 
method  of  reasoning  into  moral  subjects  to  call  his  work  a  Treat- 
ise of  Human  Nature.  His  method  of  proceeding  from  the  origin 
of  ideas  and  their  composition  to  the  Passions  and  thence  to 
Morals  is  highly  instructive.  This  method,  however,  of  connect- 
ing morals  with  Human  Nature  was  as  old  as  the  ancients,1  only 
it  had  not  been  so  completely  worked  out  before.  Neither  did 
Hume  work  out  the  problem  satisfactorily,  valuable  as  his  contri- 
bution of  the  empirical  study  of  ethics  has  been,  modern  psychol- 
ogy has  succeeded  in  presenting  a  better  representation  of  Human 
Nature.  And  to  this  extent  it  has  given  a  powerful  impulse  to 
the  appreciative  as  opposed  to  the  descriptive  study  of  ethics.2 

In  its  psychological  relation  Ethics  has  followed  a  parallel  with 
Religion.  I  mean  by  this  statement  that  the  historical  theories 
of  Ethics  have  connected  themselves  with  one  or  other  mental 
faculty.  The  Socratic  Theory  that  right  knowing  involves  right 
doing  has  appeared  again  and  again  and  plainly  connects  itself 
with  the  knowledge  faculty  or  the  intellect.  Hedonism  whether 
taken  in  its  Epicurean  form  or  as  stated  by  Bentham,  Mill  and 
their  successors  is  an  exaltation  of  feeling  and  belongs  to  the  sense 
function.  And  last  of  all  the  will  faculty  is  represented  by 
Stoicism  which  is  sometimes  theistic  and  sometimes  atheistic.  In 
order  to  avoid  the  necessary  incompleteness  of  such  ethical  func- 
tioning efforts  have  been  made  to  combine  two  faculties  under  one 

'Seth,   "Ethical  Principles,"  p.  39. 
2  Op.  tit,  p.  26. 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD    AND    ETHICS.  61 

theory.  Thus  Hedonism,  which  in  its  bald  form  of  self-seeking 
does  not  seem  to  leave  any  room  for  disinterested  action,  is  helped 
over  the  difficulty  by  subsidizing  the  intellect,  the  feelings  alone 
having  no  ability  to  construct  a  canon  of  consequences.  The 
fact  of  altruism  is  admitted  both  in  the  individual  and  in  so- 
ciety, but  it  is  admitted  as  a  disguised  egoism,  intelligence  having 
revealed  that  present  suffering  for  others  buys  future  rewards. 
Stoicism  also  seeks  an  alliance  with  intelligence.  Kant  is  the 
classic  representative  of  this  combination.1  In  his  Theory  of 
Ethics  he  hits  upon  the  good  will  as  the  only  good  thing  in  the 
world  but  he  worked  out  his  marvellous  theory  of  knowledge  as  a 
preface  to  the  question  "  What  ought  I  to  do  ?  "  And  the  good 
will  is  placed  under  the  direction  of  the  Pure  Practical  Reason. 

Actions  are  of  two  kinds,  either  impulsive  or  purposive.  Im- 
pulsive action  is  the  reaction  of  the  sensorium  upon  an  impression, 
purposive  is  linked  with  ideas.  We  can  say  that  a  human  being 
is  responsible  for  impulsive  action  only  to  the  extent  that  he  is 
responsible  to  transform  what  he  is  by  nature  into  a  character. 
Impulsive  action  is  altogether  or  nearly  immediate.  Purposive 
action  on  the  other  hand  is  reflective,  indicates  choice  and  reveals 
character.  It  connects  therefore  with  the  faculties  of  the  soul  and 
at  the  same  time  calls  attention  to  a  norm  of  judgment  which 
gives  it  color  or  character.  Out  of  the  manifold  of  possible  ac- 
tions it  fixes  upon  one  and  makes  it  real.  In  observing  the  rela- 
tion of  purposive  action  to  the  soul  we  are  led  to  remark  that 
psychology  has  done  for  Ethics  precisely  the  same  that  it  has  done 
for  Religion.  It  has  shown  the  futility  of  every  attempt  to  func- 
tion Ethics  in  any  way  just  as  it  has  shown  that  Religion  is  not  to 
be  tied  to  one  particular  faculty.  The  will  for  example  is  not  to 
be  taken  in  isolation.  In  the  act  of  choice,  elements  of  knowledge 
and  feeling  are  present  and  a  feeling  is  nothing  without  the  ideas 
and  preferences  which  hold  it  in  solution.  Every  part  of  an  in- 
dividual's being  participates  in  his  ethical  act.  It  is  true,  that,  at 
one  stage  or  another  of  the  act,  one  or  other  faculty  predominates, 
but  even  this  is  difficult  to  determine.  In  making  a  choice,  for 

1  Kant's  "Theory  of  Ethics,"  Abbott,  p.  9. 


62  THE   IDEA   OF   GOD. 

example,  there  is  the  thought  of  the  object  of  choice,  together 
with  the  desirable  and  undesirable  relations  of  that  choice,  which 
are  the  feelings  of  anticipation  pleasant  or  unpleasant,  held  in 
representation,  and  finally  there  is  the  predominance,  which  con- 
stitutes the  acceptance  or  rejection  of  the  object.  All  this  is 
accompanied  by  what  may  be  described  as  a  wave  motion  in  the 
psychical  process.  But  in  this  entire  composite  representation 
what  would  be  described  as  the  supreme  function?  Like  the 
three  brothers  in  the  Arabian  tale,  one  has  the  medicine,  another 
has  the  seeing  glass,  and  the  third  has  the  transporting  carpet. 
Who  shall  say  which  saved  the  dying  father  ? 

It  does  not  help  this  method  of  connecting  a  theory  of  Ethics 
with  a  faculty,  if  one  of  the  faculties  is  made  intuitional.  A 
theory  of  Conscience,  is,  no  doubt,  to  be  expected,  in  connection 
with  what  we  have  already  said  concerning  enthusiasm ;  for  the 
success  of  Religion  in  finding  God  lends  encouragement  to  the 
hope  of  an  intuitive  apprehension  of  the  good  and  the  bad.  But 
our  conclusion  under  that  topic  was  that  intuition  apart  from  ex- 
perience is  full  of  vagaries.  Truth  and  value  must  serve  as  its 
tests.  Any  attempt,  therefore  to  extend  the  powers  of  the  know- 
ing faculty,  as  is  done  in  intuitional  ethics,  cannot  be  differenti- 
ated from  Religion.  Any  discovery  of  the  good  or  the  bad  in  the 
abstract,  by  a  peculiar  faculty  of  the  mind  known  as  conscience, 
or  the  Moral  Sense,  is  just  as  hopeless,  as  the  Hedonistic  attempt 
to  discover  good  and  evil  by  means  of  the  sense  faculty  ;  and  Hed- 
onism has  the  advantage  of  an  appeal  to  experience. 

Norms.  —  What  we  have  said  of  the  theories  of  Ethics,  connected 
with  the  various  psychical  functions,  has  already  served  to  indi- 
cate the  various  norms  by  which  ethical  judgments  are  regulated. 
Rational  systems  find  some  law  either  discovered  in  a  revealed 
will  of  God,  or  developed  in  the  evolution  of  society,  or  the  cat- 
egorical imperative  of  Pure  Practical  Reason.  The  norm  of  sen- 
sational ethics  is  pleasure,  either  the  happiness  of  the  individual 
or  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number.  And  last  of  all 
the  standard  of  the  volitionalist  is  value.  But,  our  psychological 
examination  of  the  process  of  functioning  Ethics  revealed,  that 


THE    IDEA   OF   GOD   AND    ETHICS.  63 

neither  of  these  theories  is  capable  of  standing  alone ;  and,  if  in 
isolation,  they  are  insufficient  to  account  for  the  facts  of  expe- 
rience, their  norm  of  moral  judgments  must  be  rejected.  So  long 
as  one  or  the  other  of  these  ethical  theories,  in  their  various  de- 
velopments, try  to  give  an  account  of  conduct,  we  must  expect 
the  field  of  ethics  to  continue  to  serve  as  a  battlefield.  A  moral 
act  is  neither  purely  rational,  nor  purely  volitional,  much  less,  is 
its  entire  reference,  present  or  future,  mere  happiness.  It  is 
neither  to  be  judged,  in  any  final  way,  by  a  law  which  would  show 
it  to  be  right  or  wrong,  nor  by  pleasure  which  serves  as  its  index, 
nor  by  its  value.  Either  of  these  norms  alone  and  all  of  them 
synthesized  do  not  furnish  a  sufficient  ground  for  all  ethical  judg- 
ments. On  the  other  hand  our  theory,  and,  I  may  add,  the  Gos- 
pel of  Christianity,  finds  the  true  norm  of  conduct  in  a  life,  a 
living  unity  with  the  Father.  It  is  true  that  the  teachings  of 
Jesus  represent  the  Will  of  the  Father  as  the  law  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  nevertheless,  that  will  is  not  a  Jieteronomous  will  but 
an  autonomous  relation  of  the  soul  of  the  believer  to  his  God. 
This  idea  of  moral  judgments,  and  this  alone,  agrees  with  what 
our  study  of  the  Ontological  proof  has  led  us  to  conceive  of  the 
relation  of  life  to  the  Most  Perfect  Being. 

II. 

THE  ONTOLOGICAL  METHOD  OF  ETHICS. 

Metaphysics.  —  It  is  now  time  to  define  our  attitude  toward 
metaphysics.  We  have  avoided  the  use  of  this  term  because  of 
the  implication  of  dualism  contained  in  it.  The  living  relation  of 
the  seen  and  the  unseen  of  the  sensible  and  the  intelligible,  is  de- 
stroyed by  sundering  even  in  thought  the  physical  and  the  meta- 
physical. The  course  of  our  discussion  must  have  revealed  that 
we  accept  mental  and  physical  phenomena  alike  as  real.  There 
is  no  reality  isolated  from  what  is  known  in  experience.  There 
is  indeed  an  infinite  manifold  of  reality  which  experience  has  not 
comprehended,  but  it  is  not  in  any  sense  severed  or  isolated  from 
what  is  apprehended.  No  particle  of  reality  is  known  either  in 


64  THE   IDEA   OF    GOD. 

its  infinite  or  its  infinitesimal  relations,  nevertheless,  some  parti- 
cles are  known  relatively  and  they  connect  with  what  is  not  known. 
The  soul  and  God  are  not  known  fully  and  never  can  be  so  known 
by  a  finite  understanding  but  they  are  known  in  part,  and  a  God 
other  than  the  God  of  experience  does  not  exist.  If  then  by  meta- 
physical we  mean  all  that  our  senses  are  incapable  of  apprehend- 
ing of  reality  I  do  not  object  to  the  term  so  long  as  it  sets  no  limits 
to  the  possibility  of  experience. 

Again  ideas  belong  to  the  totality  of  reality.  They  are  not  to 
be  severed  from  sensible  reality  for  the  real  cannot  exist  without 
them.  They  constitute  the  intention  of  things  and  hold  the  same 
purpose  in  themselves  which  they  embody  in  things.  It  is  the 
identity  of  the  purpose  in  the  object  and  in  the  idea  which  renders 
knowledge  possible. 

Our  third  position  is  that  an  event  as  well  as  a  thing  may  em- 
body a  purpose.  Events  without  purpose  are  accidents.  Events 
embodying  purposes  are  rational  acts.  Under  this  head  then  all 
moral  actions  are  to  be  included.  The  cognitive  power  of  the 
soul  by  means  of  attention  combines  events  which  would  otherwise 
pass  without  a  meaning.  Intelligent  choice  consists  in  holding 
attention  by  means  of  ideas  to  those  objects  of  choice  which  will 
advance  the  best  interests  of  life.  The  supreme  or  regulative 
purpose  is  the  will  of  the  Ontological  Idea  and  a  life  is  moral  or 
immoral  according  to  the  conduct  of  the  individual  under  the 
guidance  of  this  supreme  purpose. 

Kant.  —  It  is  necessary  at  this  point  to  examine  the  transcen- 
dental Theory  of  Ethics  proposed  by  Immanuel  Kant.  The  weak- 
ness of  his  theory  of  knowledge  is  nowhere  more  apparent  than  in 
his  Ethics.  It  introduces  the  impossible  situation  of  a  man's  con- 
scious life  entirely  shut  up  to  the  sensible  world  and  as  such  sub- 
ject to  the  necessity  of  natural  law,  at  the  same  time  receiving  a 
categorical  imperative  —  a  moral  law  —  from  the  intelligible 
world  in  which  his  liberty  has  its  abode.  It  is  not  remarkable 
when  we  consider  this  situation  that  he  began  by  saying  :  "  Noth- 
ing can  possibly  be  conceived  in  the  world,  or  even  out  of  it, 

JKant,  "  Theory  of  Ethics,"  trans,  by  Abbott,  p.  9. 


THE    IDEA   OF   GOD   AND    ETHICS.  65 

which  can  be  called  good  without  qualification,  except  a  good 
Will,"  and  concluded  with  a  discussion  "  on  the  radical  evil  in 
human  nature.  "  "  The  good  will  is  good  not  because  of  what 
it  performs  or  effects ....  but  simply  by  virtue  of  the  volition, 
IT  is  good  in  itself"  It  has  an  absolute  value.  "Duty  "  is  de- 
nned as  "  the  necessity  of  acting  from  respect  for  the  law."  2  And 
"  an  action  done  from  duty  derives  its  moral  worth,  not  from  the 
purpose  which  is  to  be  attained  by  it  but  from  the  maxim  by  which 
it  is  determined."  The  stoicism  revealed  in  these  quotations  is 
obtrusive,  but  we  are  reminded  of  Lotze's  remark  that  "  an  uncon- 
ditioned should  or  ought  to  be  is  unthinkable."  3 

The  second  important  point  in  Kant's  theory  is  "  that  all  moral 
conceptions  have  their  seat  and  origin  completely  a  priori  in  the 
reason."  4  It  is  their  pure  origin  which  gives  them  worth  and 
renders  it  important  to  exclude  everything  empirical  from  them. 
With  this  point  in  view  he  proceeded  to  deduce  the  Categorical 
Imperative  which  must  be  derived  from  the  general  concept  of  a 
rational  being.  The  moral  law,  thus  derived,  differs  from  all 
natural  laws  and  "  the  idea  of  it;  which  determines  the  will,  is 
distinct  from  all  the  principles  that  determine  events  in  nature 
according  to  the  law  of  causality,  because  in  their  case  the  deter- 
mining principles  must  themselves  be  phenomena," 5  and  since 
this  is  true  the  will,  determined  by  such  an  universal  legislative 
form,  must  be  free  from  the  law  of  causality.  "  Such  indepen- 
dence is  called  freedom."  Of  the  three  concepts  God,  freedom 
and  immortality,  the  second  alone  is  proved  by  the  apodictic  law 
of  practical  reason.  The  possibility  of  the  other  two  is  to  be 
proved  by  the  fact  that  freedom  actually  exists. 

By  the  discovery  of  the  categorical  imperative  in  the  pure 
practical  reason  Kant  arrived  at  the  principle  of  autonomy.  The 
will's  independence  of  all  matter  of  the  law,  as  a  desired  object, 
constitutes  freedom  in  the  negative  sense ;  but  autonomy  or  self 

1  Ibid.,  p.  325. 

2 Ibid.,  p.  16. 

3Lotze,  "Philosophy  of  Keligion,"  p.  157. 

4 Kant,  "Theory  of  Ethics,"  p.  28. 

5  Ibid.,  p.  116. 


66  THE    IDEA    OF    GOD. 

legislation  is  freedom  in  a  positive  sense.1  On  the  other  hand  all 
heteronomous  theories  are  opposed  to  the  morality  of  the  will. 

Kant  identified  the  moral  law  as  a  law  of  Holiness  with  the  will 
of  God  as  a  perfect  being.  It  thus  represents  the  one  point  of 
contact  between  the  phenomenal  and  real  world.  The  existence 
of  God,  however,  is  still  only  a  postulate,  and  if  the  commands  of 
the  moral  law  are  to  be  realized  in  any  way  the  existence  of  God 
and  the  reality  of  immortality  must  be  postulated. 

The  discussion  on  the  Indwelling  of  the  Sad  Principle  along  with 
the  Good  discovered  the  fact  of  radical  evil  in  human  nature. 
Man  is  either  morally  good  or  bad,  he  cannot  be  partly  one  and 
partly  the  other.  There  is  an  original  capacity  for  good  along 
with  the  propensity  to  evil  in  human  nature,  but  the  fact  that  the 
propensity  to  evil  belongs  to  man  universally  proves  it  to  be  an 
acquired  capacity.  "  The  capability  or  incapability  of  the  elective 
will  to  adopt  the  moral  law  into  its  maxims  or  not,  arising  from 
this  natural  propensity,  is  called  a  good  or  a  bad  heart.2  And 
the  degrees  of  badness  conceivable  are  to  be  termed  frailty,  im- 
purity and  depravity.  Frailty  accepts  the  ideal  conception  of  the 
moral  law  but  is  too  weak  to  resist  sensuous  inclinations.  Im- 
purity does  not  adopt  the  law  alone  as  its  sufficient  motive  but 
makes  use  of  other  means  to  determine  the  elective  will  to  duty. 
And  depravity  prefers  other  springs  to  the  dynamic  of  the  moral 
law. 

There  remains  to  be  considered  "  the  restoration  of  the  original 
capacity  for  good  to  its  full  power."3  Kant  takes  the  position 
that  "  what  man  is  or  ought  to  be  he  must  make  or  must  have 
made  himself."  The  hope  of  the  restoration  he  finds  in  the  cate- 
gorical imperative.  The  respect  for  the  moral  law  can  never  be 
lost,  therefore  all  that  is  necessary  is  the  restoration  of  its  purity 
as  self-sufficient.  When  it  -is  thus  restored  by  the  elective  will 
the  one  who  has  adopted  it  is  on  the  way  to  holiness  by  an  endless 
progress.  Virtue  is  thus  gradually  acquired.  From  these  obser- 

1  Kant,  "  Theory  of  Ethics,"  p.  122. 

2  Kant,  "  Theory  of  Ethics,"  p.  336. 
zlbid.,  p.  352. 


THE   IDEA   OF    GOD   AND    ETHICS.  67 

vations  the  conclusion  is  drawn  that  "  the  moral  culture  of  a  man 
must  begin  with  the  transformation  of  a  mind  and  the  foundation 
of  character.1  The  moral  capacity  in  us  we  cannot  cease  to  regard 
with  the  highest  astonishment,  it  proclaims  a  divine  origin  and 
must  arouse  the  spirit  to  enthusiasm.3  If  the  moral  law  com- 
mands that  we  shall  now  be  better  men,  it  follows  inevitably  that 
we  also  can  be  better. 

Christian  Ethics.  —  This  selection  of  quotations  from  the  Theoiy 
of  Ethics  is  sufficient  to  reveal  the  general  features  of  the  Kantian 
theory  and  at  the  same  time  manifest  its  points  of  likeness  to  and 
difference  from  our  own  theory.  The  fact  that  Kant  appealed  to 
the  a  priori  method  to  establish  the  moral  law  furnishes  at  least  a 
point  of  contact  with  the  same  method  when  used  to  prove  the 
existence  of  a  most  perfect  being.  The  difference,  however,  is  in 
that  the  moral  law  is  but  one  determinate  part  of  reality  while  the 
most  perfect  being  embraces  reality.  And  Kant  was  driven  by 
his  own  reasoning  to  postulate  the  existence  of  God  and  the  reality 
of  immortality  by  the  fact  that  pure  reason  does  discover  the 
moral  law.  If  the  Kantian  system  had  been  discovered  outside 
of  and  away  from  Christian  influences  it  would  be  truly  a  remark- 
able system  ;  but,  when  we  find  in  it,  a  mighty  effort  to  crush  the 
principles  revealed  in  the  Christian  system  of  thought  into  the 
mould  of  his  transcendental  idealism,  we  are  repelled  by  it.  Take 
the  categorical  imperative  "Act  only  on  that  maxim  whereby 
thou  canst  at  the  same  time  will  that  it  should  become  a  universal 
law,"  and  put  down  beside  it  the  rule,  "  All  things  whatsoever  ye 
would  that  men  should  do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so  unto  them  "3  —  is 
the  first  possible  without  the  second  ?  Pure  reason  unaided  by 
religion  never  could  have  reached  such  an  height.  On  the  other 
hand  Religion,  grasping  in  its  Ontological  Idea  a  perfect  Being 
and  holding  experience  in  an  inseparable  relation  to  that  idea,  pre- 
pared the  way  for  reason. 

Again  the  principle  of  autonomy  is  the  very  heart  of  Christian 


.,  p.  356. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  358. 

3  Matthew,  7:12. 


68  THE    IDEA   OF   GOD. 

ethics  as  expounded  by  Saint  Paul.  It  is  the  very  essence  of  the 
metanoia.  Jew  and  Greek,  Barbarian  and  Scythian  alike,  out  of 
Christ,  are  in  the  bondage  of  Heteronomy.  The  law  to  them  was 
a  yoke  of  bondage.  The  law  itself  is  good  but  it  is  always  looked 
upon  as  imposed  from  without,  and  obedience,  the  empirical  filling 
in  of  this  good  law,  was  discovered  to  be  impossible.  Faith,  how- 
ever, by  accepting  Christ  and  entering  into  union  with  Him  also 
introduces  the  law  as  an  autonomous  principle.  For  one  whose 
"  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in  God  " l  the  law  of  God  or  the  perfect 
will  of  God  is  a  part  of  his  being.  This  change  is  so  great  that 
Paul  ever  described  it  as  a  resurrection  from  the  dead. 

Calvinistic  Ethics.  —  The  spontaneousness  of  the  autonomous 
principle  of  life  brings  to  our  thought  the  dilemma  of  the  scho- 
lastics. "  Is  the  good  good  because  God  wills  it  or  does  God  will  it 
because  it  is  good  ?  "  2  If  we  adopt  the  first,  we  thereby  deny  the 
character  of  God ;  and  if  we  accept  the  latter,  we  give  up  the 
supremacy  of  God.  This  dilemma  is  to  be  avoided  by  saying 
God  is  good  and  there  is  no  goodness  apart  from  Him.  "  There 
is  none  good  but  one  that  is  God,"  and  human  goodness  arises 
from  union  with  him.  Since  this  subject  was  discussed  under  the 
topic  metanoia  it  is  not  needful  to  enlarge  upon  it  in  this  place. 
There  is,  however,  an  important  problem  of  ethics  which  has  its 
solution  in  this  conception  of  the  union  of  the  believer  with  God. 
It  is  everywhere  apparent  in  what  might  be  called  Calvinistic 
Ethics.  It  is  also  prominent  in  the  Kantian  theory.  It  is  tersely 
expressed  in  the  saying  :  "He  that  is  not  with  me  is  against  me/' 
or  as  Kant  expressed  it :  "A  man  is  either  good  or  bad ;  he  cannot 
be  part  bad  and  part  good."  These  sayings  seem  to  conflict  with 
what  we  constantly  observe.  Good  and  bad  do  seem  to  be  mixed 
in  all  human  life.  This  seeming,  however,  disappears  when  we 
cease  to  judge  human  actions  by  their  outward  worth  and  fix  our 
attention  upon  their  inmost  purpose.  In  the  last  analysis  good- 
ness or  badness  are  determined  by  the  relation  which  the  soul  sus- 
tains to  God.  This  position  the  Calvinists  describe  as  an  inclina- 

1  Collossians,  3  :  3. 
8Lotze,  op.  tit.,  p.  160. 


THE    IDEA    OF    GOD   AND   ETHICS.  69 

tion  or  disposition  of  the  will.  In  my  theory  it  is  rather  that 
relation  to  God  which  makes  the  will  of  God  autonomous  in  the 
believer.  This  is  not  to  say  that  the  relation  to  God  which  a 
metanoia  discovers  makes  the  character  of  the  individual  im- 
mediately perfect  and  complete.  Virtue  is  still  attained  by  an  in- 
finite progress.  Nevertheless  the  helpful  relation  which  the  soul 
of  the  believer  sustains  to  God  makes  the  pathway  to  virtue 
easier. 

Our  agreement  with  Kant  in  regard  to  heteronomy  and  au- 
tonomy is  thus  substantial.  In  the  preceding  chapter  we  have 
already  described  the  heteronomous  theories  as  unable  to  stand 
alone.  All  systems  which  depend  upon  empiricism  must  fail  to 
discover  a  universal  law  and  all  rational  systems  whether  theistic 
or  atheistic  fail  to  give  a  dynamic  and  therefore  "gender  to 
bondage."  It  does  not  matter  whether  the  norm  of  conduct  is 
a  will  of  God  revealed  by  divine  inspiration  or  a  law  of  nature 
discovered  by  reason,  the  bondage  is  equally  galling.  The  only 
true  freedom  is  the  freedom  gained  in  the  Christian  sense  of  a 
union  with  the  source  of  all  goodness.  At  this  point  our  de- 
parture from  Kant  is  apparent  and  for  a  better  way.  Of  what 
possible  value  can  goodness  be  if  the  doer  of  the  good  act  can 
have  no  motive  but  the  act  itself.  On  the  other  hand  if  a  good 
action  is  done  in  a  real  world  and  springs  from  the  actor's  relation 
to  that  world,  our  conception  of  its  value  is  enhanced. 

The  Idea  of  God,  therefore,  has  served  as  a  guide  in  criticising 
ethical  theories  and  in  discovering  the  true  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem of  ethics.  It  contributes  the  long-sought  dynamic  by  dis- 
covering the  purpose  of  the  Ontological  Idea.  It  leads  to  the 
true  norm  of  conduct  by  revealing  a  perfect  will  embodied  in  a 
perfect  life.  And  this  process  has  been  verified  by  the  historical 
revelation  of  goodness  to  the  world  first  in  a  nation,  Israel,  and 
then  in  an  historic  person,  Jesus  Christ. 

CONCLUSION. 

We  have  now  traversed  the  way  which  the  subject  of  our  thesis 
indicated  for  us.  That  way  was  determined  by  the  inner  nature 


70  THE   IDEA    OF    GOD. 

of  the  theme.  Two  things  have  appeared  prominently  throughout 
the  discussion.  The  first  is  that  the  Ontological  argument  either 
directly  or  by  implication  has  served  as  a  guiding  principle  in 
thought.  It  demands  a  theory  of  knowledge.  The  transition 
which  Anselm  made  from  the  concept  of  a  most  perfect  being  to 
the  God  of  religious  experience  requires  a  discovery  of  the  rela- 
tions subsisting  between  concept  and  being.  The  problem  thus 
proposed  has  been  discussed  in  every  theory  of  knowledge  worthy 
of  mention.  We  have  found  in  Idealism  the  only  answer  that 
meets  the  requirements  of  experience.  Again  the  a  priori  nature 
of  the  argument  gave  thought  an  introspective  turn  and  prepared 
the  way  for  a  science  of  psychology  and  a  scientific  psychology  of 
religious  experiences.  And  in  the  last  place  the  concept  of  a  most 
perfect  being  since  it  is  a  part  of  the  sum  total  of  experience  could 
not  fail  to  influence  the  moral  character  of  man.  Thus  in  these 
vital  concerns  of  thought,  experience  and  conduct  the  Ontological 
Proof  of  the  existence  of  God  has  served  as  a  valuable  guiding 
principle.  This  I  would  call  the  first  part  of  its  practical  content. 

The  other  part  is  concerned  more  directly  with  its  validity. 
In  the  analysis  of  Consciousness  we  found  a  condition,  a  relation 
between  concept  and  emotion  internally  and  between  purpose  and 
act  externally  which  has  to  be  applied  to  the  Ontological  concept. 
The  idea  of  an  Other  is  ever  connected  with  the  limitation  of  self. 
This  idea  is  analyzed  as  experience  furnishes  it  with  a  content. 
Its  purpose  holds  together  those  experiences  which  stand  the  test 
of  truth  and  value.  Thus  the  Ontological  Idea  takes  its  place  as 
a  constructive  force  in  the  world.  It  dominates  the  religious  life. 
It  also  gives  the  only  true  Dynamic  to  Ethics.  I  cannot  conceive 
of  an  impersonal  categorical  imperative.  And  Lotze  has  well  said  : 
"  A  value  appreciated  by  no  one  and  consisting  in  pleasure  and 
pain  for  no  one  is  something  which  contradicts  itself."  Religion, 
then,  consisting  of  character,  all  that  a  man  is  in  himself  and  in 
his  relation  to  God,  and  conduct  or  all  that  a  man  does,  is  the 
other  practical  content  of  the  Ontological  Proof  of  the  existence 
of  God.  "  Si  monumentum  quaeris,  circumspice." 

1  Lotze,  "Philosophy  of  Beligion,"  p.  157. 


. 


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